Sorry For Your Trouble, Richard Ford’s 13th book of fiction, shows a writer still very much on song. The mainly male middle-aged protagonists of these nine stories seem often to be assessing their regrets but coming to terms with them. In ‘Second Language’, a man is enchanted by his glamorous second wife but able to accept when, after two years, she tells him (for no clear reason) that the marriage is over. Alongside multiple divorces, there are plenty of sudden deaths here — not least that of a wife who simply lays her head on her hands and stops breathing. A doctor later diagnoses cancer, but the conclusion is: ‘Dying was likely the only real symptom she’d experienced.’
The most disturbing story is ‘Displaced’, in which a vulnerable boy becomes desperate for friendship after the death of his father. His only mate is a jaded, older adolescent who, unprompted, kisses him when they go to a drive-in movie. The friend concludes the evening by saying: ‘You’ll kill and steal and break people’s hearts and fuck your sister and burn down houses.’
