Multitude of Sins

Before Richard Ford published Independence Day, the first novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, he twice read its seven hundred pages aloud to his wife, correcting rhythmical miscues and shades of connotation. Such are the lengths to which an author will go so readers meeting his sentences on the page will "think exactly what I imagine they would think."

The son of a traveling salesman, Ford spent much of his youth living in an Arkansas hotel managed by his grandfather. After publishing two modestly successful novels he turned away from literature and tried sportswriting, instead, working for Inside Sports magazine until it ceased publication in 1982. When Sports Illustrated failed to offer a position he turned back to fiction. The result was The Sportswriter, which introduced readers to Frank Bascombe (who would return in Independence Day, and will again in The Lay of the Land). Soon after came Rock Springs, a stunning collection of stories that established Ford's literary reputation.

In A Multitude of Sins, Ford offers ten pieces "about the way people fail each other. Fail themselves, even." From the simple, arresting vision of the collection's opener, "Privacy," to the consequential short novella at its close, "Abyss," the stories dramatize private lives, couples coming together and apart, infidelities of both body and mind. Dave, Powells.com

With this masterful new book — his first in nearly four years — Richard Ford reaffirms the judgment of The New York Times Book Review that "nobody now writing looks more like an American classic."

Only a storyteller of Ford's remarkable agility and seriousness could produce such a rich array of stories on the single, dramatic theme of love and intimacy. A Multitude of Sins evokes, with unflinching candor, our failures to achieve what we consider to be most important: to be faithful and sincere, empathetic and patient, to be honest and passionate and finally loving toward those we care for or merely, if desperately, desire. As in all of Ford's work, the settings are as distinct as Montreal is from New Orleans, or Maine and the Grand Canyon. Yet in each he is drawn to the relations between women and men — liaisons in and out and to the sides of marriage. It is in these relations, his extraordinary stories suggest, that our entire sense of right and wrong is enacted, and the fierce intensity he brings to these vivid, unforgettable dramas marks this as his most powerfully arresting book to date.

"[Ford's] mordant gaze falls on American men and women at those moments when they are crumpling up their lives like soiled tissue, looking back in disappointment, looking forward in what they are unable to recognise as despair....[He] can conjure up Chekhovian degrees of tragedy, dredging straightened lives with a peerless ability to identify human failing." Tom Lappin, The Scotsman (UK)

"The stories' readability is partly in their voyeuristic appeal and partly from Ford's mastery of narrative pace....Ford does what he does best, shows a fragile arrangement subtly breaking down, monitors the damage done to the psyches involved. It is a deft, highly observant performance." David Herd, Times Literary Supplement (UK)

"Startling and unabashed....Ford's sheer mastery of the form is jaw-dropping." Julie Myerson, The Guardian (UK)

"Actually, it's a single sin: adultery and its 'multitude' of consequences, explored with varying success in this dour collection of nine stories and a novella." Kirkus Reviews

"Ford's execution is flawless; [the novella, 'Abyss'] has a canonical heft to it, bearing comparison to the best of Flannery O'Connor. Its presence alone makes this collection an essential volume, and the rest of the stories hold their own alongside it." Publishers Weekly

With this masterful new book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author evokes with unflinching candor our failures to achieve what we consider to be most important: to be faithful, patient, honest, passionate, and loving toward those we care for.

One of the most celebrated--and unflinching--chroniclers of modern life now explores, in this masterful collection of short stories, the grand theme of intimacy, love, and their failures. And only a storyteller of Richard Ford's remarkable agility, insight, and candor could envision with such felicity our most fallible human efforts to achieve what we consider most important with one another: to be faithful and sincere, empathetic and patient, to be honest and passionate and finally loving toward those we care for or merely, if desperately, desire.

As in all of Ford's work, the settings are as distinct as the Connecticut countryside is from New Orleans, or a Michigan ski resort from Grand Central Station. Yet in each he is drawn to liaisons in and out and to the sides of marriage. An illicit visit to the Grand Canyon reveals a vastness even more profound . . . An exacting career woman celebrates Christmas with her adamantly post-nuclear family . . . A couple weekending in Maine try to

recapture the ardor that has disappeared, both gradually and suddenly, from their life together . . . A boy confronts his estranged father on a hunting trip and finds a disappointment that will change him forever . . . As they drive through a spring evening, a young wife confesses to her husband the affair she had with the host of the dinner party they're about to join.

It is within such relations, these extraordinary stories suggest, that our entire sense of right and wrong is enacted, and the rigorous intensity Richard Ford brings to these vivid, unforgettable dramas marks this as his most powerfully arresting book to date--confirming the judgment of the New York Times Book Review thatnobody now writing looks more like an American classic.

The author of five novels and two collections of stories, Richard Ford was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Independence Day, the first book to win both prizes. In 2001 he received the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction.