The Lay of the Land was published by Knopf in 2006. Frank Bascombe is fifty-five, living on the New Jersey shore (Sea-Clift), selling real estate, and navigating Thanksgiving week in November 2000. He has prostate cancer (treated, but the fear remains). His second wife Sally has left him — returned to her first husband, who was presumed dead but reappeared. The presidential election between Bush and Gore remains unresolved. Everything is uncertain.
Ford’s Bascombe has entered the “Permanent Period” — a philosophical stance of acceptance: things are what they are, the past cannot be recovered, the future is unknowable, and the present must be inhabited fully because it is all there is. This philosophy is tested by everything that happens over the Thanksgiving weekend: encounters with difficult clients, a visit from his troubled son, his ex-wife X’s latest demands, and the national uncertainty of the contested election.
The novel is the longest and most expansive of the Bascombe sequence — over 500 pages — and some critics found it too diffuse. But Ford’s defenders argue that the expansiveness is the point: Bascombe’s voice (discursive, observant, simultaneously ironic and earnest) requires space to develop its particular effects. The New Jersey shore in November — off-season, empty, beautiful in its bleakness — provides the perfect setting for Bascombe’s autumnal reflections.
Collecting The Lay of the Land
First edition (Knopf, New York, 2006): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$40
- Signed: $40–$75
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
Bascombe in the Bush Years
The Lay of the Land (2006) is the third Frank Bascombe novel, set during Thanksgiving week 2000, as the Bush-Gore election recount plays out on television. Bascombe, now in his mid-fifties, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, his second wife has left him to rejoin her first husband (presumed dead, now alive), and his real estate business on the New Jersey Shore is thriving. The novel is Ford’s longest and most expansive, a panoramic portrait of post-9/11 America filtered through Bascombe’s ironic, accommodating consciousness.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this the last Bascombe book? No — Ford published a fourth, Let Me Be Frank with You (2014), a collection of four linked novellas set in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Ford has said the Bascombe series is now complete.