Christmas brings Frank Bascombe to the Default Period of his life.

Christmas brings Frank Bascombe to the Default Period of his life.

Now sixty-eight, Frank resides again in the New Jersey suburb of Haddam, and has thrived - seemingly but not utterly - amid the devastations of Hurricane Sandy, which has left countless lives unmoored, and is remarkably the perfect occasion for Ford and Bascombe to relay four Christmas stories.

With a flawless comedic sensibility and unblinking intelligence, Ford ranges over the full complement of universal subjects: ageing, race, loss, faith, marriage, the real estate debacle - the tumult of the world we live in.