SOURCE: Ross, Cecily. “Flames of Desire.” Maclean's 103, no. 37 (10 September 1990): 82.

In the following review, Ross offers high praise for Wildlife, describing it as “charged with poignancy and pain … Richard Ford at his finest.”

Frank Bascombe, the central character of Richard Ford's 1986 novel, The Sportswriter, is a middle-aged journalist still reeling from his failed marriage and his abortive career as a fiction writer. As he surveys the disarray of his life, he predicts: “Something will happen. At least we have that to look forward to.” The same tone of hopeful melancholy colors the adolescent struggles of Joe Brinson, the 16-year-old protagonist of Ford's new novel, Wildlife. “Something'll happen to make things seem different,” says his mother, Jeanette Brinson, attempting to console her son. In his short stories (Rock Springs) and longer fiction (A Piece of My Heart, The Ultimate Good Luck), Ford repeatedly offers such small consolations in the face...