Annotation
Frank Bascombe is no longer a sportswriter, yet he's still living in Haddam, New Jersey, where he now sells real estate. He's still divorced, though his ex-wife, to his dismay, has remarried and moved along with their children to Connecticut. But Frank is happy enough in his work and pursuing various civic and entrepreneurial sidelines. He has high hopes for this 4th of July weekend: a search for a house for deeply hapless clients relocating to Vermont; a rendezvous on the Jersey shore with his girlfriend; then up to Connecticut to pick up his larcenous and emotionally troubled teenage son and visit as many sports halls of fame as they can fit into two days. Frank's Independence Day, however, turns out not as he'd planned, and this decent, appealingly bewildered, profoundly observant man is wrenched, gradually and inevitably, out of his private refuge. Independence Day captures the mystery of life — in all its conflicted glory — with grand humour, intense compassion and transfixing power. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Awards
1996 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
1995 Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year
1996 Pulitzer Prize
Characters
| Name | Bascombe, Frank |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Real estate agent |
| Traits | Divorced |
| Father | |
| Ex-sportswriter | |
| Genre | Domestic Fiction Psychological |
| Topics | Family relationships Realtors Midlife crisis Fathers and sons Guilt Divorced men Love affairs Communication Road trips Suburban life |
| Setting | Springfield, Massachusetts Cooperstown, New York New Jersey Suburb Road trip |
| Series | ||
| Frank Bascombe novels | ||
| 1 | The Sportswriter | |
| 2 | Independence day | |
| 3 | The Lay of the land | |