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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
It's hard to say why I liked this book but I did. I thought the character development was well done and was able to understand some of the outlandish thoughts and behaviors of the adult children having seen snippets of their childhood. Many of the negative reviews complain about how distasteful the characters were, which I agree with, but I'm not sure why you have to like the characters to enjoy a book. The beauty of characters in a book, as opposed to people in real life, is that you get to know all the crazy shit they think about but know better than to say out loud. I wonder how much we would like anyone in we were privy to all of their thoughts?
I feel really conflicted about this book. On the one hand I thought it was well written and that the theme of the book was interesting (the different ways in which we as individuals/as a society/as a planet get 'off track' and how life has a way of self-correcting but those corrections come at a price).
The cons far outweighed the pros though. The first part of the book was just awful. I'm guessing it was intentional, to make the reader uncomfortable and unsteady, as it's brought up later in the book as a tactic used in the screenplay by the younger brother. If I'd been reading this for pleasure and not as part of our group I would have stopped right there. It came across as very pseudo-intellectual. You could tell the author liked the sound of his own 'voice'. And the jeez, talk about over using metaphor! And the run on sentences! I wanted to pull my hair out!
Once I got past that section the writing smoothed out a bit and it was easier to read. But then I couldn't stop 'hearing' the author. His voice is so intrusive it pulls you out of the story. It feels like he's writing a memoir (and my guess is this is largely autobiographical) and that he's very impressed with how smart and witty he is. There were moments of humor, but I couldn't enjoy them because I felt like it was at the expense of the characters. Like I could hear him sitting behind me reading over my shoulder and patting himself on the back.
I hated the characters. I like well rounded characters that are real and flawed but I could barely tolerate them. They were greedy, lazy, self-entitled, hedonistic, controlling, aggressive, passive, self-righteous, snobby etc. If I could relate to any of them it was the daughter but even she drove me crazy. Honestly, they all seemed to be suffering from some kind of mental illness. I kept hoping someone would talk them into going to therapy. I understand the characters, I really do. I know people like each one of them and they make me crazy in real life too. But in real life people are complex and even the most hardened criminal has redeeming qualities. When you finally see a little humanity in them it's almost an after thought. It's like he spends the first 95% of the book telling you why each of these people is misguided, broken and empty and then in the very last chapter suddenly decides to be charitable and throw in a 'but they weren't all bad'.
I didn't care for how crude the author was at times. I'm not a prude but it just seemed crass and pointless. And the constant shifting around in time made it confusing and hard to follow sometimes. And there were questions left unanswered (like why the husband suddenly seems to hate the wife early on in their marriage, refusing even to have sex with her unless she's unconscious). I also had a hard time empathizing with their problems. My brain wanted to append a #firstworldproblems to the end of every whiny sentence. There were times that I got so frustrated and so stressed out that I'd find myself biting my nails down to the quick and I'd have to stop and breathe for awhile.
The ending was...weird. I don't think he knew how to end it. It was sudden and seemed like an outline for an ending rather than a fully fleshed out version. You don't really know what happens to any of the characters and the oldest brother is barely an afterthought. Plus, they all suddenly get their shit together and start acting (barely) like human beings for no apparent reason. There's a catalyst, the fathers death, but WHY does it affect them the way it does? Give me some internal dialogue for Pete's sake!
In the end I felt like the book covered some subtle (and not so subtle) themes that were actually really interesting and worth thinking about. The baggage we carry from our childhood and past relationships, the way we try to find meaning or earn absolution or guard our hearts so we don't get hurt. The way we look for fulfillment in other people or material possessions. The secrets we keep. Growth, forgiveness and balance. And especially the corrections that take place in our lives, the stock market, the environment etc and those corrections are every bit as heavy and far reaching as the deviations that necessitated them. But all these themes were overshadowed by the authors need to point out how awful it was for him to grow up in a privileged white upper-middle class Midwestern American community. It's a shame because it could have been a really moving book that led to a lot of introspection but instead it was an ego-stroking exercise in frustration.
The cons far outweighed the pros though. The first part of the book was just awful. I'm guessing it was intentional, to make the reader uncomfortable and unsteady, as it's brought up later in the book as a tactic used in the screenplay by the younger brother. If I'd been reading this for pleasure and not as part of our group I would have stopped right there. It came across as very pseudo-intellectual. You could tell the author liked the sound of his own 'voice'. And the jeez, talk about over using metaphor! And the run on sentences! I wanted to pull my hair out!
Once I got past that section the writing smoothed out a bit and it was easier to read. But then I couldn't stop 'hearing' the author. His voice is so intrusive it pulls you out of the story. It feels like he's writing a memoir (and my guess is this is largely autobiographical) and that he's very impressed with how smart and witty he is. There were moments of humor, but I couldn't enjoy them because I felt like it was at the expense of the characters. Like I could hear him sitting behind me reading over my shoulder and patting himself on the back.
I hated the characters. I like well rounded characters that are real and flawed but I could barely tolerate them. They were greedy, lazy, self-entitled, hedonistic, controlling, aggressive, passive, self-righteous, snobby etc. If I could relate to any of them it was the daughter but even she drove me crazy. Honestly, they all seemed to be suffering from some kind of mental illness. I kept hoping someone would talk them into going to therapy. I understand the characters, I really do. I know people like each one of them and they make me crazy in real life too. But in real life people are complex and even the most hardened criminal has redeeming qualities. When you finally see a little humanity in them it's almost an after thought. It's like he spends the first 95% of the book telling you why each of these people is misguided, broken and empty and then in the very last chapter suddenly decides to be charitable and throw in a 'but they weren't all bad'.
I didn't care for how crude the author was at times. I'm not a prude but it just seemed crass and pointless. And the constant shifting around in time made it confusing and hard to follow sometimes. And there were questions left unanswered (like why the husband suddenly seems to hate the wife early on in their marriage, refusing even to have sex with her unless she's unconscious). I also had a hard time empathizing with their problems. My brain wanted to append a #firstworldproblems to the end of every whiny sentence. There were times that I got so frustrated and so stressed out that I'd find myself biting my nails down to the quick and I'd have to stop and breathe for awhile.
The ending was...weird. I don't think he knew how to end it. It was sudden and seemed like an outline for an ending rather than a fully fleshed out version. You don't really know what happens to any of the characters and the oldest brother is barely an afterthought. Plus, they all suddenly get their shit together and start acting (barely) like human beings for no apparent reason. There's a catalyst, the fathers death, but WHY does it affect them the way it does? Give me some internal dialogue for Pete's sake!
In the end I felt like the book covered some subtle (and not so subtle) themes that were actually really interesting and worth thinking about. The baggage we carry from our childhood and past relationships, the way we try to find meaning or earn absolution or guard our hearts so we don't get hurt. The way we look for fulfillment in other people or material possessions. The secrets we keep. Growth, forgiveness and balance. And especially the corrections that take place in our lives, the stock market, the environment etc and those corrections are every bit as heavy and far reaching as the deviations that necessitated them. But all these themes were overshadowed by the authors need to point out how awful it was for him to grow up in a privileged white upper-middle class Midwestern American community. It's a shame because it could have been a really moving book that led to a lot of introspection but instead it was an ego-stroking exercise in frustration.
After reading samples of Corrections and Freedom I was very impressed with Franzen's style. The full version of Corrections didn't disappoint. He does so many things well. The characters are well-developed and realistic. The attention to detail is Tom Clancy-like (minus the insomnia-curing level of minutia). The tangents are so well-written I was thankful rather than annoyed that he went with unexpected choices(Lithuania, anyone?)rather than falling back on cliched plot twists. Interesting how he ties together the various storylines both in how he connects the characters as well as viewing the same event from a variety of characters' perspectives. He teases out several butterfly effect surprises that also make unanticipated connections. Some of the passages were so devastating in their descriptions that I got a knot in my stomach while reading them. In particular thinking of the painful disfunction between Gary and Caroline; Alfred's physical decline; Enid's perpetual nagging disappointment in her life and her family; Denise's self-destructive tendencies; Chip's mayorship of Loserville. Not because they were gruesome or frightening, but because I know people like that and the level of stress and despair was imminently relatable and perfectly represented. In fact, perhaps they were a little frightening, too, as I occasionally felt uncomfortable similarities between some of the more unsavory characteristics and my own behaviors. Don't be that girl!
I really did not like Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. It reads easily enough, and Franzen has competent, easy-moving sentences, but while there are no road-blocks to pleasure here, there is very little to get excited about either. I found nothing particularly engaging about the characters, the plot, the relationships, the humor, or Franzen’s insights into human nature or the modern condition. This is my first Franzen novel, and I’ll be surprised if it’s not my last. My enjoyment of the book certainly suffered from my having just read Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. While reading Atwood, I was struck by passage after passage of poetry, both in phrasing and insight. Compared to Atwood’s gifts, Franzen’s skills are sophomoric at best.
For the most part, reading The Corrections reminded me of reading a Grisham novel: painless but dull. I found Franzen’s stabs at cleverness to be writerly and meaningless. For example: “She’d always been a pretty woman, but to Chip she was so much a personality and so little anything else that even staring straight at her he had no idea what she really looked like.” That’s the kind of sentence that looks appealing on the surface but which is neither revealing nor plausible. It is a sentence devoid of any real meaning. Franzen’s similes fare no better than these empty phrases. Similes can either be a tool of power and clarity or they can be cute. Only a handful of the former find their way into this novel. Most are like this example, which I found at random flipping through the book: “The doormen in this neighborhood hosed the sidewalk twice a day, and sanitation trucks with brushes like the mustaches of city cops scoured the streets three times a week, but in New York City you never had to go far to find filth and rage.” The simile of “brushes like the mustaches of city cops” does nothing to give tooth or meaning to the sanitation trucks and what they represent. It’s an empty rhetorical device that is used competently but in a way that adds nothing to the story.
Family, self-deception, intellectual theorizing vs. reality, the loss of the Midwestern innocence, the use of pharmaceuticals and therapy to compensate for the emptiness of our modern existences—these are all interesting thematic concerns and worthy of exploration though cutting fiction. This is not that cutting fiction. It grapples these subjects like a limp-grip handshake of someone who’s not all that interested in or comfortable with the meeting.
My dislike of The Corrections has nearly everything to do with taste of literary preferences. Writerly sentences and empty similes are hardly a reason to dismiss a book; I give these examples as indicators of the novel’s general literary approach. Someone else might find this style rewarding, but it does nothing for me. This is one of the few novels whose presence on the Time’s 100 list is a complete mystery to me. Nearly everything else has been either amazing, culturally important, historically important, or stylistically important. The Corrections is none of those things.
For the most part, reading The Corrections reminded me of reading a Grisham novel: painless but dull. I found Franzen’s stabs at cleverness to be writerly and meaningless. For example: “She’d always been a pretty woman, but to Chip she was so much a personality and so little anything else that even staring straight at her he had no idea what she really looked like.” That’s the kind of sentence that looks appealing on the surface but which is neither revealing nor plausible. It is a sentence devoid of any real meaning. Franzen’s similes fare no better than these empty phrases. Similes can either be a tool of power and clarity or they can be cute. Only a handful of the former find their way into this novel. Most are like this example, which I found at random flipping through the book: “The doormen in this neighborhood hosed the sidewalk twice a day, and sanitation trucks with brushes like the mustaches of city cops scoured the streets three times a week, but in New York City you never had to go far to find filth and rage.” The simile of “brushes like the mustaches of city cops” does nothing to give tooth or meaning to the sanitation trucks and what they represent. It’s an empty rhetorical device that is used competently but in a way that adds nothing to the story.
Family, self-deception, intellectual theorizing vs. reality, the loss of the Midwestern innocence, the use of pharmaceuticals and therapy to compensate for the emptiness of our modern existences—these are all interesting thematic concerns and worthy of exploration though cutting fiction. This is not that cutting fiction. It grapples these subjects like a limp-grip handshake of someone who’s not all that interested in or comfortable with the meeting.
My dislike of The Corrections has nearly everything to do with taste of literary preferences. Writerly sentences and empty similes are hardly a reason to dismiss a book; I give these examples as indicators of the novel’s general literary approach. Someone else might find this style rewarding, but it does nothing for me. This is one of the few novels whose presence on the Time’s 100 list is a complete mystery to me. Nearly everything else has been either amazing, culturally important, historically important, or stylistically important. The Corrections is none of those things.
I wish GR had a multi-tiered review system. I really want to give The Corrections four stars for writing, and three stars for enjoyability. As other readers remarked, it's hard to like a book with exactly zero sympathetic characters. More than anything, I appreciated hearing the story from Alfred's point of view - talking turds aside - after he fell victim to dementia. After watching my grandfathers go through the same thing, and feeling helpless to do anything about it, reading about Alfred's delusions were about as close as I can get to experiencing real thing. There's the sympathetic aspect of the book.
Fascinating treatment of the inner lives of 5 members of a family, none especially likeable. Frank, sensitive and imaginative explorations of the various ways sexuality/sensuality can play out. Lovely lyrical sentences and intriguing metaphors in every paragraph. Several points of uncanny resonance with my own life and family experiences. The Lithuania bit was entertaining but a little hard to follow and not really believable. The end was a bit pat, a little letdown after the long slow buildup of tension around the One Last Christmas.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes