A Piece of My Heart

by Richard Ford

Ford's mesmerizing first novel is the story of two godless pilgrims. Robard Hewes has driven across the country in the service of a destructive passion. Sam Newell is seeking the missing piece of himself. When these men converge, on an uncharted island in the Mississippi, each discovers the thing he's looking for--amid a conflagration of violence that's as shocking as it is inevitable.

"This is one of those books that hit you hard...a story filled with breathing characters and genius-crafted dialogue between moments of consummate description.... I can't be unbiased. I'm mad for this book."--Elizabeth Ashton, Houston Chronicle

Genres: Fiction, Novels, American, Literature, Contemporary, Literary Fiction

Paperback

First published October 1, 1976

About the author

Richard Ford, born February 16, 1944 in Jackson, Mississippi, is an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank With You, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories. Comparisons have been drawn between Ford's work and the writings of John Updike, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Walker Percy.

His novel Independence Day won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1996, also winning the PEN/Faulkner Award in the same year.

Reviews

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am ambivalent about this book. Two directionless, self-absorbed men meet at the rural home of an equally self-absorbed and rather strange older man. These men may be broken and not very likable, but they have a depth and complexity that I admire in fiction. Much of this novel unfolds in dialogue rendered with an excellent ear for the natural and colloquial. Ford avoids spoon-feeding the reader anything; we are allowed to watch and to listen, but we must figure things out for ourselves. Unfortunately, much of my time in this story, I felt disoriented, scrambling to try to understand what was really going on. Early in the book, there is a scene along a road through the desert of the Southwest. Giving a ride to a stranded motorist, one of the characters stops at an isolated service station/convenience store supervised by an adolescent girl. On the property are several cages containing small animals. In one is a bob cat and a terrified jack rabbit soon to be the cat’s dinner. In a way, this felt like a metaphor for the novel. These men postured as if they were the bob cat while knowing themselves to be the jack rabbit. And, I, the reader, felt like the desperately disgusted traveler, wanting to rescue a pathetic animal I neither liked nor respected but powerless to do anything. Reading this novel had all the appeal and all the compulsion of watching a train wreck, and all the grace of watching a ballet. Because despite all the brokenness and ugliness in these pages, Ford tells this story with a technical grace that is beautiful. 3.5 stars

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is so much action, color, character and amazing scene setting in this story. Jam packed with an overwhelming number of well-crafted and poignant descriptions of the light, the land, our thoughts, the air, the sun, our memories, the physical details of the people and situations who strike us, who leave a mark on our minds.

[Jessie Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of those books where the first 5 pages were brutal. I re-read them about three times and still had no idea what was going on. The use of "he" really got me. As it turns out, in any given chapter, "he" refers to the person the chapter is named for...but it took me a while to figure that out.

The writing in this book is definitely good. The descriptions of nature were always incredibly precise and moving. What I did not like about it, however, was that I kept waiting for something to happen. It finally does, on the last page, but up until then I was hoping and praying that something would happen to these characters. One of whom is kind of a lost/depressed city boy and the other a lost/depressed country boy. Both are trying to find their way out of malaise but neither seems to be able to.

I do enjoy how it is told from two different people's perspectives, though. If only I could see real life from two different perspectives...

A frustration I felt throughout the entire book was that the characters have many interesting thoughts but never seem by able to communicate them honestly. In this sense, perhaps the book is all too real to life.

Overall: by the end it was definitely a page turner, but it took real effort to get involved in the story line and I wish something had happened sooner.

Favorite bits of writing:

"He thought that if your life was filled with beginnings, as he had just decided today that his was; and if you were going to stay alive, then there would be vacant moments when there was no breathing and no life, a time separating whatever had gone before from whatever was just beginning. It was these vacancies, he thought, that had to be gotten used to." -pg.8

"...he knew that things in your life didn't disappear once they were begun, and that your life just got thick with beginnings, accrued from one day to the next, until you reached an age or temperament when you couldn't support it anymore and you had to retire from beginnings and let your life finish up on momentum." -pg.15

"There had been a look in Mr. Lamb's face as if be just felt the ballast of his life going off, and couldn't stop it, and an abstraction had come on him for the first time ever and scared him and made him go after cures, which he knew in advance wouldn't work, since he knew there wasn't any way in the world to end it now. Since everything you were lonely for was gone, and everything you were afraid of was all around you." -pg.219

"It was the compromise satisfaction a person got, he thought, when washed up on the beach of some country after spending weeks floating around on a tree limb, too far from home ever to hope to be deposited there, and satisfied to be on land, no matter really which land it happened to be." -pg.225

[Jabberwock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pure southern gothic - in the tradition of O'connor and Faulkner! This may seem like a departure from his later writing, but adds a lot of context for the tradition from which Ford emerged. His ear for dialogue (however improbable it might sound to a non-southerner) and eye for how cultural geography informs character is stunning at times.

[Rafa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es su primera novela, y esta tan preocupado por parecerse a Faulkner que, él o yo, nos perdimos.

[Pabgo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prose reads like poetry. Dark. Beautiful. Characters bring to mind Faulkner, McCarthy. Loved this book.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...and that your life just got thick with the beginnings, accrued from one day to the next, until you reached an age or a temperament when you couldn't support it anymore and you had to retire from beginnings and let your life finish up on momentum" (15).
"'They might've strained their imaginations… They ain't got too much of that'" (95).
"Gaspareau conned the boat closer..." (102). *Conned!
"...pine yearlings..." (107).
"... there's these two old farmers sittin side by side in the privy, and one old farmer stands up and starts to grab his braces and all his change falls out down the hole. And right quick he reaches down in his pocket, pulls out as wallet, and throws a twenty-dollar bill right in there after it. And the other old farmer says, "Why Walter, what in the world did you do that for?" And the first old farmer says, "Wilbur, if you think I'm going down in that hole for thirty-five cents, you're crazy as hell"'" (116).
"...letting the screen wag back between his fingers" (117).
"'I'm the only person who'll take me seriously.
"'You'd think that'd teach you something...'" (119).
"'Them little birdies know it, too. That's why they're out there singing all the time. They are trying to tell us something. "Tweet, tweet, you're alive, you ignorant asshole"'" (142).
"'Instead you look like somebody going to a funeral for a fellow you didn't know" (197).
"...staring at his feet as if he were looking at a well of fast-flourishing disasters" (197).
"'I ain't getting rich and I ain't kissing' ass'" (277). *The sign of a great livelihood.
*Having just reread several Richard Ford books I'm noticing that this one in particular sparkles with surprising and inventive verbs. Love it.

[Carolyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I chose this book because I liked Richard Ford's later books and thought I would try out some of his earlier ones. Turned out to be a mistake. It's one of the few books I've read where I reached the end and asked myself why I wasted my time. Perhaps the only moral to the story is that if you leave your wife to chase another women and think the whole time it's a mistake, it probably is!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish Ford had written this later in his career. I liked the main thread better than most of his books, but he kept dipping into stuff that bored me a bit, made me tune out. Could have been his best if he'd gotten more skill before getting to it, or maybe he would have gotten more into the manly man stuff more by then and it wouldn't have worked better for me at all. Hard to say.

[Khris Sellin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't know why I went back to old Richard Ford stuff. Anything but the Frank Bascombe series is, for me, excruciating. I'm sure I'll forget and go back again a few years from now. 😂😐

[Vladimir Caraballo Acuña · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tengo poco que decir sobre este relato de Richard Ford. Tal vez solamente que no parece Ford. He leído casi toda su obra y me crucé con este libro, barato, y que no conocía. Es de mis escritores favoritos por la calma de sus relatos, porque, como le dije a alguien alguna vez, escribe largas novelas para sostener, en la mayoría, un solo momento: aquel en el que un hombre mayor (siempre de más de cuarenta años) llora. Usualmente no sabe por qué, usualmente solo se da cuenta cuando ya las lágrimas han mojado todo su rostro.
Lo que ocurre en "Un trozo de mi corazón" es todo lo contrario. Todos los personajes hablan demasiado, pelean demasiado, son demasiado violentos. Ocurren demasiadas cosas, todas demasiado explícitas. Me costó mucho, sinceramente, llegar al final. No la recomiendo.

[Ian Symonds · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Richard Ford's first novel. I found it quite a tough read, with an obscure plot and charmless characters set in the boondocks of Arkansas and Mississippi. Things are only partially clarified as the narrative progresses to a conclusion foreshadowed in the opening pages. Ford had perhaps yet to develop the introspection, wry observation and mellifluous prose epitomised in his Frank Bascombe novels.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enlightening book that confirmed my own observations. It is overwhelming that we treat the poor worse than we treat our pets. The answer must come from all within being confronted and made to face their greed and inhumanity. I am sick of the good religious people who continue to act in such ways to another human being.

After reading this book I feel that the only way for change to occur is to require all to switch housing situations so that both poor and rich can see the advantages and disadvantages each has. I doubt places like the South Bronx would remain as ill cared for if white upper middle class became even a transient presence. Some would get done if only to protect themselves and the poor could benefit from more diverse classes living in close proximity.

[Maria Altiki · Rating 2 out of 5]

Αν και η γραφή του Ford είναι αξιόλογη στις περιγραφές της, όπως και στο χτίσιμο των χαρακτήρων, στο συγκεκριμένο μυθιστόρημα η ιστορία ήταν τόσο αδιάφορη και ανούσια που με το ζόρι το διάβαζες. Το μόνο ενδιαφέρον κομμάτι του βιβλίου ήταν οι τελευταί��ς 10 σελίδες. Επίσης υπήρχαν κομμάτια μέσα στη διήγηση απο τις αναμνήσεις ένος αγοριού που ούτε κατάλαβα σε ποιον αναφερόταν, ούτε την σύνδεση του με το υπόλοιπο κείμενο. Το μόνο που κρατάω απο το βιβλίο είναι οι καταπληκτικές περιγραφές και ελπίζω επειδή αυτή ήταν η πρώτη δουλειά του συγγραφέα, οι επόμενες να είναι πιο ενδιαφέρουσες, αν κ δεν ξέρω αν θα έμπαινα στην διαδικασία να διαβάσω κάτι άλλο.

[Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliantly written first novel, a dark story of two men struggling with the most basic ideas of who they are and what their purpose might be in the world. A dense piece of writing in which nothing much happens in terms of actual events or actions, but that keeps the reader rapt nonetheless with depth of description and the inner lives of the characters. Ford's amazing career since (including a Pulitzer) is prefigured neatly in this excellent novel.

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ford is one of my favorite authors-I loved the sportswriter, independence day and lay of the land. I'd read some of his short stories and didn't grove on them as much, so I knew I wouldn't like all of his work. I just didn't enjoy this one - hard to describe why. It was well written - the man knows how to chose his words carefully-but it had an odd tone to it. Was going to force myself to finish it - it's not that long, but life is short, so into the unfinished pile it goes...

[Jorge Cienfuegos · Rating 3 out of 5]

La primera novela de Richard Ford lleva su sello por todas partes, pero también demuestra lo mucho que ha crecido el autor desde entonces. Entre los destellos de prometedora genialidad aparecen demasiadas escenas insulsas y confusas que entorpecen la lectura y le exigen al lector, quizás, más de lo que merece la pena dar para la recompensa a obtener. Muy lejos de ser la mejor novela del autor, y solo recomendable para sus lectores más fieles.

[Harald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1976 this powerful, first novel by one of my favorite authors, Richard Ford, is still surprisingly fresh and exciting. Ford's American South might be gone, but the two main characters are believable, somewhat confused misfits chasing their personal conception of the American dream. The men have most of the action; the women are bit players.

[Rory Mcclenaghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some way between Barry Gifford and Faulkner this is very different from the later Frank Bascombe books. More of a brooding southern Gothic than the introspection of his later works. Like in Faulkner the peculiar sentence structure of the south can be hard to follow but it's taut and tense throughout.

[Justin Labelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

' He thought that if your life was filled with beginnings, as he had just decided today that his was, and if you were going to stay alive, then there would be vacant moments when there was no breathing and no life, a time separating whatever had gone before from whatever was just beginning. It was these vacancies, he thought, that had to be gotten used to'

Ford's first novel isn't as structurally sound as his later ones.
It starts in the most intriguing of ways with a murder and an unknown victim.
Everything from here on end circles back to this initial set of pages.
There a beautiful moments in the novel and a realistic toxic relationship.
There's violence, 'Philosophising' and a few N bombs.
The characters are rich, complex and often funny.
The central piece seems to be about a rabbit, a missing leg and an inescapable death.
At times the work seems a little too conscious of the possibilities of symbols and interpretations, but I've always taken great joy from dissecting these very same things. They just might come across as heavy handed to some readers.
There's also a wet imprint left on a letter sent to Robard and it isn't a kiss.
Which sounds just odd enough to have been experience by the author or a friend.
A good first novel just a few threads away from being a great one.
Highlights (missing pages because I'm trying to write less in my books and I've taken to taking quick pictures instead)

'In general, he knew, things didn't end in your life because by all sensible estimations they ought to' (11)

'It worried him because he knew that things in your life didn't just disappear once they were begun, and that your life just got thick with beginnings, accrued from one day to the next, until you reached an age or temperament when you couldn't support it anymore and you had to retire from beginnings and let your life finish up on momentum' (15)

'... with women in general, and that there was still this much left, this much of an oppurtunity to do with the way he wanted, and that thirty four was still young, inasmuch as you only got to live one time and this was his time right now (16)
Rabbit incident (26)

'Ah, shit Robard. We're all dying sooner or later. Them assholes think they figured the reason. But I'm satisfied there ain't no reason'

'He tried to fathom what had ruined her. It seemed like she could rule her life to the point of perfect control, which was the point of purest despair, and after that she had lost it all and suffered as if something indispensable had been grabbed away so quick she didn't know she had it or ever could have controlled it. and that ruined her. He didn't like the idea that whatever hard turner her life into a hurricane had turned his the same way and made a part of his own existence sag out of control down into the sink of unmanageables. Because if nothing else was clear, he thought now, that much was. (chapter 6)
'Since everything you were lonely for was gone, and everything you were afraid of was all around you' (219)
'Because I went to bed thinking I was going to die, and I didn't want to be turned around like a fool. I had a feeling my heart was going to stop. and I suppose it did. I've spent the day getting myself ready, and now I am' (265)
'One day you think you never even made a choice and then you have to make one, even a wrong one, just so you're sure you're still able. And once that's over, you can go back and be happy again with what you were before you started worrying'

[Ronnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

He felt like he ought to get away, and at the same time felt helpless to maneuver a way to go about it.

There's no way to read that sentence and not think of the scene early on with the doomed jackrabbit stuck in the same cage with Leo, the "borned bad" bobcat at the dilapidated gas station "zoo" from hell. Based on the prices of stamps and Butterfingers, the year is around 1971, and most of the action takes place in a very rural locale near or on the Arkansas-Mississippi border. Co-protagonists Robard Hewes and Sam Newell are thrown together there from opposite starting points, and they're different breeds of men, alike only in being at loose ends and not knowing what to do next. Stranded motorist Jimmye Crystal and Robard's cousin Buena seem cut of the same wildcat, horndog cloth, the only more flamboyantly colorful character being the cantankerous, paranoid Mark Lamb, boss of the tragic island where all strands converge. Parts of this reminded me of McCarthy's Suttree, though Ford's tale has a steady, escalating tension that I don't recall from Cormac's. The scene with Buena's mysterious baggies in the shower left me feeling the same way I did watching the briefcase scene in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, which is to say puzzled. It also feels like most of this book is deserving of the five-star "amazing" rating, so I'm herewith upgrading from my original four. It's memorable.

First line [Prologue]:
"W.W. came down over the levee in the rain, his old Plymouth skidding out of the ruts and his gun barrel pointed wildly out the window, still warm from being shot."

[Colin Brightwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Richard Ford. "Rock Springs" is one of my favorite short story collections. His prose is so precise and interesting in that book.

But not in A Piece of My Heart.

This might just be Ford doing that writer's first novel cliche: trying too hard. Because it felt like a younger Ford was trying too hard. Trying to be the next Faulkner or McCarthy. And yeah, there's some good sentences here and there. But like, what the hell happens in this book?

Nothing much. He seems to sacrifice a larger plot for characterization and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of description. And this is not inherently a bad thing: this method really works well in the short story format. But in a novel, you can have some really damn interesting characters, but that don't mean Jack if they ain't doing anything. Oh, and yeah his descriptions got boring and annoying REAL FAST. It felt like he was sitting in his room with a bottle of bourbon and was saying to himself, YES LOOK AT ALL THESE WORDS I AM USING TO DESCRIBE...THINGS THAT DO NOT REALLY MATTER IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS.

Again, description is important. Look at any McCarthy book. But the thing is, Cormac McCarthy's books have characters.....DOING THINGS in between those paragraphs of descriptions.

Oh well. Hopefully this was just an early flub in Ford's Pulitzer Prize winning career and the Sportswriter will be a more enjoyable read that actually says something.

[Anni Kramer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two men, Robard Hewes and Sam Newel are drawn independently of each other to to an island in Mississippi, each for his own reasons. The plot may be questionable, as the book tends to stray from this red thread and I found myself lost within the story, needing to flip back regularly for reminders on the characters and what they were searching for. But the descriptions are brilliant, close to the literary genius of Faulkner and McCarthy. It is Richard Ford's first book, and for that alone, I give him five stars, I would have given him six if I had been able to. The character studies and their movements are hauntingly human. The scenes with Mr. and Mrs. Lamb, for example, are superb, I found myself engrossed in the story and its characters, able to feel and smell and hear every move they made through Ford's vivid, well-observed depiction. The darkness surrounding the story pulled me into its orbit so well, that I'm still haunted by the language and the author's ability to percieve and detail humans to such an extent.
Glad to give this book five stars.

[Addison Braendel · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I didn’t finish this completely, having gotten to an age where I can put down a book mid-way if it is not as absorbing as a 4 or 5 star book is. BUT, you fans of Richard Ford, this is worth reading, at least in part. Some of his later books are masterpieces. We know he is really, really good. This one is his first try, and parts of it shine. Other parts, not so much ....

The opening is terrific. Most of the Robard narrative is, too. With Newell, his use of the ‘he’ pronoun feels experimental and — for me at least — fails. The italicized flashbacks are also off rhythm here. Maybe it culminates in something transformative; I’ll never know.

But I’m not sorry I got to page 138, and I’d do it again if I had to.

[Rainer F · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much happens in this book and I wonder if I understood what it was about. Two men from different parts of the US, with different educational backgrounds come together in a house on an island in the Mississippi River that is on no map. One of the men has a destructive love affair with hos cousin. The characters are weird, reminding me of people I have actually met and that you see on every other long distance greyhound. The descriptions are vivid and the language reminds of the great American men like Faulker, Hemingway, Steinbeck.
But it is not my piece of cake. Not much action and only two scenes to remember. Suddenly, on the last 7-8 pages, the plot takes up some pace and violent things happen.

[micha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ganz sicher nicht mein liebster Roman von Richard Ford, der sich zäh und orientierungslos durch seinen undurchsichtigen Plot davonschleppt, an einem einsamen Weiher bevölket mit Redneck-Idioten und bumswilligen Weibern.

Ein Erstlingswerk, wie häufig kritisiert wird, und zu forciert. Dem schließe ich mich an. Der natürliche Flow seines späteren Werks, der wie eine unsichtbare Strömung den Text mit sich fortnimmt, von diesem Flow ist hier noch nicht zu spüren. Ziemlich zäh, viel zu lang, und ohne Kompass.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book was hard work. It might have been easier to understand if I had quit school in the third grade to tend moonshine somewhere in the deep south in 1926. I'm saying the story was difficult to follow and I questioned continuing with it. But with fewer than 200 pages to go I was beginning to enjoy the dialogue and I could picture the characters and follow their conversations. All in all I guess I might recommend the book to someone but I have not yet met that person.

[Alejandro G. Barroso · Rating 4 out of 5]

Por el adrenalítico arreón final valió el esfuerzo de haber contenido varios resoplidos a la mitad del libro, estancado por esas cosas que tienen los escritores de la profundidad, el ritmo y su cambio de marcha. Richard Ford va al cajón de los recursos -entre Faulkner y Bukowski, al lado de Cormac McCarthy- que abro cuando no sé qué leer.

[Les · Rating 3 out of 5]

If, like me, you value plot over style, this book probably isn't for you. As others have commented, the storyline ambles around and doesn't particularly go anywhere much. That said, I did enjoy Ford's gritty writing style in this tale of the American underclass. It isn't a work that will stick in my mind for long, but I don't regret the reading of it.

[Moira Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are in the heart, too, of Fords's characters, in the intense atmosphere which surrounds them, in the spare but powerful language which supports them, in the drama of their emotions and the ordinariness of their essential lives. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.