SOURCE: Burn, Gordon. “In Arch-Ordinary America.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4815 (14 July 1995): 21.

In the following review, Burn applauds Ford's Independence Day as a considerable achievement that offers a fresh perspective on modern American life.

“Prayerful” is a word Richard Ford has used (ruefully, not approvingly) to describe his writer's voice, although “fuguish”, as he uses it in this new novel, would have served as well. Among the early-morning sounds that are enumerated in the swelling, Aaron Copland-like overture to Independence Day—the university band tuning up on the football gridiron, a train hurtling through to Philadelphia, “the footfalls of a lone jogger”—are the bells of St Leo the Great in Haddam, the suburban/tourist town in New Jersey that is home to Frank Bascombe, Ford's narrator: “gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, gong, then a sweet admonitory matinal air by old Wesley himself: ‘Wake the day, ye who would...