SOURCE: "You Can't Drive Home Again," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 2, 1995, pp. 1, 7.

[In the following review, Smith praises Ford's Independence Day for features he says Ford's readers have come to expect—the mimetic dialogue and telling detail—but points out that "the book can be a hefty sulk."]

A central dread of Frank Bascombe's life in Richard Ford's new novel, Independence Day, is that his ex-wife has married an architect. Bascombe is a realtor, someone who by his own description sells dreams. But his ex has left him for somebody who builds them, and somehow manages to bring those dreams to life. The question of what makes a house a home, and a group of people a family, animates Ford's novel.

Bascombe goes on an air-conditioned drive across New England, in a sense looking for the architect who might animate his own life. It's a parody...