SOURCE: Hiney, Tom. “What Became of Huckleberry Finn?” Spectator 275, no. 8714 (15 July 1995): 31.

In the following review, Hiney describes Ford's Independence Day as well-written but crippled by a boring subject.

When a good novelist chooses a boring subject to write about, the results can be exasperating. and as far as boring subjects go, male mid-life crises are about as bad as you get. The mid-life crisis is no doubt pretty exasperating itself but, like migraines, its importance is unfortunately strictly in the eye of the beholder.

Richard Ford is widely considered capable of writing Great American Novels, and it might be argued that there is some chronological logic to his choice of hero: the dulled Frank Bascombe could well be what Huck Finn grew up to be after he was a Great Gatsby thirtysomething. The trouble for the reader is that Finn and Gatsby had adventures whereas Bascombe has only...