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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
I liked it very much, but don’t see it as among the best books of the century.
Drawn in from the very first page, as Franzen brilliantly describes a stressful event while making the reader anxiously following his long sentences, transferring the emotion of his character to the reader.
- Brilliantly depressing
- Brilliantly depressing
Well, not much to like about this one. I got about 20% through it and decided I would rather clean out my fridge than finish reading this book. The characters were depressing, impossible to like and making waste of their lives. Franzen's writing style is overwhelming. When an entire sentence takes up more than one screen on my Kindle, I'm irritated. Very hard to establish a reading pace with an author as verbose as Franzen. He seems to toss "fancy" words around like candy, thinking that will impress his readers. Hard to impress anyone when your characters are completely unlikeable.
I thought "Oh dear," when I saw the Oprah Book Club logo on the cover of Jonathan Franzen's novel "The Corrections" (apparently living in a hole or something having heard nothing of the controversy... wouldn't have even heard of the book if it weren't part of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die.) I get why it was an Oprah pick -- a dysfunctional family with troubles galore -- but I was pleasantly surprised to find I liked the book quite a bit.
Franzen tells the story of a stereotypical Midwestern family, led by a tyrannical father Alfred who is suffering from depression and Parkinson's Disease and Enid, a mother who is disappointed in most everything her three children do. In fact, her children have all managed to muck up their lives pretty well, in part, one suspects in their efforts to escape their upbringing. These five people are hurtling toward a Christmas together where it is very clear from the beginning of the book that their issues are all going to come to a head.
The characters are so extremely flawed that their smallest kindnesses toward each other are the only thing that makes them likeable. It also makes them interesting and realistic, which carries the book along. Overall, I found it an interesting and worthwhile read.
Franzen tells the story of a stereotypical Midwestern family, led by a tyrannical father Alfred who is suffering from depression and Parkinson's Disease and Enid, a mother who is disappointed in most everything her three children do. In fact, her children have all managed to muck up their lives pretty well, in part, one suspects in their efforts to escape their upbringing. These five people are hurtling toward a Christmas together where it is very clear from the beginning of the book that their issues are all going to come to a head.
The characters are so extremely flawed that their smallest kindnesses toward each other are the only thing that makes them likeable. It also makes them interesting and realistic, which carries the book along. Overall, I found it an interesting and worthwhile read.
challenging
dark
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
extremely terrifying, mostly very good, occasionally very bad, always very long.
Fantastic, devastating novel about family. Anyone who has elderly parents (or frankly siblings) will at some point reading this feel like it hits a little too close to home.
I read 82 pages. Franzen's a gifted writer and I don't mind that the prose is a bit self-conscious. The treatment of depression and Parkinson's is excellent for those 82 pages, and the outline of the book on Wikipedia sounds very interesting.
I just couldn't make it past yet another big novel with a "student seduces humanities professor and it leads to his downfall" subplot. [b:White Noise|11762|White Noise|Don DeLillo|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327934706s/11762.jpg|327422] nailed faculty characters in extremis for all time, [b:Lolita|7604|Lolita|Vladimir Nabokov|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1377756377s/7604.jpg|1268631] and [b:Disgrace|6192|Disgrace|J.M. Coetzee|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385161943s/6192.jpg|1882981] hit an inappropriate Jan-Dec affair and downfall with all the force one could imagine, and this topic has been so mined from high literature down to pulp bodice rippers and teen fantasy novels that I'm not sure there's anything left to say on the topic. Even Philip Roth flogged its dead corpse in many novels, e.g., [b:The Dying Animal|29776|The Dying Animal|Philip Roth|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1329410700s/29776.jpg|2683285]. The topic strikes me puerile and narcissistic to revisit. Frankly, I'm done with novels about a writer/academic and his sex life. The Corrections character Chip wants a "hump" in his screenplay that viewers have to make it over; I didn't make it over the hump of The Corrections.
I'll pick up something else by Franzen and hope for something more to my taste.
I just couldn't make it past yet another big novel with a "student seduces humanities professor and it leads to his downfall" subplot. [b:White Noise|11762|White Noise|Don DeLillo|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327934706s/11762.jpg|327422] nailed faculty characters in extremis for all time, [b:Lolita|7604|Lolita|Vladimir Nabokov|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1377756377s/7604.jpg|1268631] and [b:Disgrace|6192|Disgrace|J.M. Coetzee|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385161943s/6192.jpg|1882981] hit an inappropriate Jan-Dec affair and downfall with all the force one could imagine, and this topic has been so mined from high literature down to pulp bodice rippers and teen fantasy novels that I'm not sure there's anything left to say on the topic. Even Philip Roth flogged its dead corpse in many novels, e.g., [b:The Dying Animal|29776|The Dying Animal|Philip Roth|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1329410700s/29776.jpg|2683285]. The topic strikes me puerile and narcissistic to revisit. Frankly, I'm done with novels about a writer/academic and his sex life. The Corrections character Chip wants a "hump" in his screenplay that viewers have to make it over; I didn't make it over the hump of The Corrections.
I'll pick up something else by Franzen and hope for something more to my taste.