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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I know nothing about Jonathan Franzen's politics, so maybe that's why these reviews are so surprising to me. I thought that several plot threads slowly knotting together was standard for books written in multiple POVs, but it seems to have thrown a lot of people off. I do agree that too much emphasis was put on sex, masturbation, and women's looks. Gorgeous, honest prose was sometimes intertwined with clunky metaphors and pointless or ugly subject matter. But overall I did not get the message that "feminism is for crazy people." Leila's unfortunately short section was the most vibrant of them all. Neither did I pick up on an unwarranted distrust for the internet, though Franzen's understanding of how it works seemed primitive. And despite coming across several monologues railing against neo liberalism, commentary on current events felt like background noise. Really just there to set the mood for a book about love... the range and complexity of which I found genuinely satisfying.
Edit: Upon further research, Franzen's dismissal of women's contributions to literary canon is unfortunate.
Edit: Upon further research, Franzen's dismissal of women's contributions to literary canon is unfortunate.
Another good one from Jonathan Franzen! I enjoyed the character dynamics, and seeing how everyone was connected at the end of the book.
The story was accessible and the characters complicated, but the female characters were a bit shrill and... well, they felt like what a decent male writer might think a female character would look like if the writer were trying to work against type. I feel like Franzen should read some Alice Munro to develop a better sense of the kinds of things female characters don't have to be to be written well - like they don't all have to have well-developed theories about feminism (every time Franzen dipped into feminist theory it felt like he was trying to assuage his own guilt at being male and writing female characters; just write the character-let their actions speak whatever theory is in operation). They don't all have to have father issues (just like the men don't all have to have mother issues). Isn't it more that people have issues, and then use their mother and father as means to excuse or manage the issue?
Still enjoyed the book, though, and look forward to reading more by Franzen. I think this was the wrong book to start with where his work is concerned.
Still enjoyed the book, though, and look forward to reading more by Franzen. I think this was the wrong book to start with where his work is concerned.
I don't want you to not read Purity. I just want you to respect that it's beautifully written, with beautiful characters and beautiful interactions surrounded by plots and sub plots that just sort of hurt to read about. It hurts because all respect to the author, he's hit so many times before, but these are just so banal.
It took me a really long time to get into this book. I found myself really disliking Pip and not liking her story either. When we started to get into the backstories of Andreas, Tom and Lelia, my interest picked up. But again, toward the end of the novel - more of Andreas' introspection mostly - I lost interest again, and just wanted the story to be wrapped up( though I did appreciate how Pip took control of her situation in the last section). I would have like to rate this between two and three stars, because there were parts I enjoyed and wanted to read more about. But, ultimately, I found that I really only cared enough about the characters to have a few open questions resolved - and none of them really were.
Thoroughly enjoyed the book but was disappointed by the overwhelmingly pathologic relations between the men and women.
Man, this book and this author.
This single line should be enough for people who like and know Franzen and his writing style and favourite subjects. But I will do my best to summarize my opinion of this book in what Goodreads allows me.
To be perfectly honest, I am 100% convinced that if anyone but Franzen had written this book it would not have been as good, maybe it would have even failed. But his style of combining POVs and wrapping them together, his intellectual stance and pure ability of writing COMPLETELY DAMAGED people in such an enticing, realistic, fabulous, understandable and addictive way have all made a book filled with some of the shittiest idiots I've encountered in fiction a complete and utter success.
Normally, I would not read a page further after coming across a female character like Pip (Purity *barf* ) Tyler. The epitome of neediness, the definition of issues unhandled from pure laziness, the illustration of mediocrity, and yet, the desire of all characters with a penis. Do you feel the vomit? Cos it is right there at the base of your throat. BUUUUT....Franzen pulls it off by tying her to a story filled with much better and more interesting characters and by actually making her grow, a concept that is totally and utterly absent in a lot of books nowadays (in 100% of YA cancer, but not only). Pip develops a personality and it does not have to be my kind of personality. People forget that they are reading stories about other people, not about themselves, their children, their friends. Pip runs through a development cycle that gives her depth and that leaves the door wide open for more life, for more growth, for more failure. So basically, for a realistic, complex existence, a HUMAN existence.
If this female character was not enough, Franzen throws her defective mom at us as well, and here I do have one regret: she did not die painfully and slowly. Anabel was for me, so so real that my hatred for her became real. She is the "artist" that we all know, someone who is so talentless, so useless in this world, an ephemeral creature purely due to her own feeble mind, but that somehow, through the psychosis that she spends a lifetime raising (almost like a child one would say) and developing, manages to trap a man who, but for some issues and lacks and insecurities, would do perfectly well in life without her, but who ends up supporting her financially, emotionally, sexually to the point of his own demise / failure / insanity. Of course, I strongly believe that these couples are, in a sense, perfect together. The destructive force and the pathetic hole in which it keeps spilling. But although these couples tend to become totally absorbed with each other (something that was perfectly displayed by Franzen in Tom's chapter, aka my second favourite chapter), they inevitably wreak destruction and pain on innocent people, these innocents being either children or future partners. In an ideal world, they would simply get sucked into their own black hole. In Franzen's real world, they keep on being shitty and destructive and in love together (the ending of this book was perfect, but I don't know what the fact that I was laughing maniacally from it says about me).
Now, for the males. This is obviously a very MALE book, if books could have genders. I have read some pretty butt-hurt reviews from feminists who claim that Franzen despises women and raises men to superior levels. I am a feminist and I think that claim is utter bullshit. The women in this book are defective, true, but real. They are not strung out and forced. I recognize a lot of the symptoms and their issues and, while they are in no means GOOD role models, they are real people, who you can hate (if you're like me) or love, or identify with, or ignore. But they are REAL. The men are in no way put on a higher pedestal. I adored Andreas (again, I don't know what this says about me), but not in the way that his cult followers did. I adored him because I understand his type, his disease and his egomania. And I am okay with it. Did he at times seem a bit of an author insert / fantasy? Perhaps, but not like Tom who, I suspect, bares a bit more of the writer's soul in him. But Andreas was a powerhouse character, one I constantly liked returning to, one whose darkness fascinated me. At some points, one might feel that some of the issues come off as a bit forced, but read until the very end and you will see that it all combines and makes sense and forms a sublime puzzle of psychosis, ego and pain, a huge fresco of asking for help that never comes.
This book is, in truth, not as perfect as Freedom, but I think that Freedom has placed itself somewhere few writers (maybe not even Franzen) will ever rise again. But in some ways, it is, or becomes, a bit more cohesive if you read past the first half of the book (which tends to seem a very long character introduction). The drama has several boiling points. One truly weaker element is the language. Franzen toned it down because it works for this story and for these characters but I personally prefer the more advanced, more intellectually aloof speeches, but perhaps that is just me.
All in all, I think this is a very, very good book, with characters who are so utterly flawed, sometimes beyond repair (most of the time, actually), with great social insight, with some historical context and something I would like to see more often in Franzen's future books: diverse location, cos fuck you America. Read it.
This single line should be enough for people who like and know Franzen and his writing style and favourite subjects. But I will do my best to summarize my opinion of this book in what Goodreads allows me.
To be perfectly honest, I am 100% convinced that if anyone but Franzen had written this book it would not have been as good, maybe it would have even failed. But his style of combining POVs and wrapping them together, his intellectual stance and pure ability of writing COMPLETELY DAMAGED people in such an enticing, realistic, fabulous, understandable and addictive way have all made a book filled with some of the shittiest idiots I've encountered in fiction a complete and utter success.
Normally, I would not read a page further after coming across a female character like Pip (Purity *barf* ) Tyler. The epitome of neediness, the definition of issues unhandled from pure laziness, the illustration of mediocrity, and yet, the desire of all characters with a penis. Do you feel the vomit? Cos it is right there at the base of your throat. BUUUUT....Franzen pulls it off by tying her to a story filled with much better and more interesting characters and by actually making her grow, a concept that is totally and utterly absent in a lot of books nowadays (in 100% of YA cancer, but not only). Pip develops a personality and it does not have to be my kind of personality. People forget that they are reading stories about other people, not about themselves, their children, their friends. Pip runs through a development cycle that gives her depth and that leaves the door wide open for more life, for more growth, for more failure. So basically, for a realistic, complex existence, a HUMAN existence.
If this female character was not enough, Franzen throws her defective mom at us as well, and here I do have one regret: she did not die painfully and slowly. Anabel was for me, so so real that my hatred for her became real. She is the "artist" that we all know, someone who is so talentless, so useless in this world, an ephemeral creature purely due to her own feeble mind, but that somehow, through the psychosis that she spends a lifetime raising (almost like a child one would say) and developing, manages to trap a man who, but for some issues and lacks and insecurities, would do perfectly well in life without her, but who ends up supporting her financially, emotionally, sexually to the point of his own demise / failure / insanity. Of course, I strongly believe that these couples are, in a sense, perfect together. The destructive force and the pathetic hole in which it keeps spilling. But although these couples tend to become totally absorbed with each other (something that was perfectly displayed by Franzen in Tom's chapter, aka my second favourite chapter), they inevitably wreak destruction and pain on innocent people, these innocents being either children or future partners. In an ideal world, they would simply get sucked into their own black hole. In Franzen's real world, they keep on being shitty and destructive and in love together (the ending of this book was perfect, but I don't know what the fact that I was laughing maniacally from it says about me).
Now, for the males. This is obviously a very MALE book, if books could have genders. I have read some pretty butt-hurt reviews from feminists who claim that Franzen despises women and raises men to superior levels. I am a feminist and I think that claim is utter bullshit. The women in this book are defective, true, but real. They are not strung out and forced. I recognize a lot of the symptoms and their issues and, while they are in no means GOOD role models, they are real people, who you can hate (if you're like me) or love, or identify with, or ignore. But they are REAL. The men are in no way put on a higher pedestal. I adored Andreas (again, I don't know what this says about me), but not in the way that his cult followers did. I adored him because I understand his type, his disease and his egomania. And I am okay with it. Did he at times seem a bit of an author insert / fantasy? Perhaps, but not like Tom who, I suspect, bares a bit more of the writer's soul in him. But Andreas was a powerhouse character, one I constantly liked returning to, one whose darkness fascinated me. At some points, one might feel that some of the issues come off as a bit forced, but read until the very end and you will see that it all combines and makes sense and forms a sublime puzzle of psychosis, ego and pain, a huge fresco of asking for help that never comes.
This book is, in truth, not as perfect as Freedom, but I think that Freedom has placed itself somewhere few writers (maybe not even Franzen) will ever rise again. But in some ways, it is, or becomes, a bit more cohesive if you read past the first half of the book (which tends to seem a very long character introduction). The drama has several boiling points. One truly weaker element is the language. Franzen toned it down because it works for this story and for these characters but I personally prefer the more advanced, more intellectually aloof speeches, but perhaps that is just me.
All in all, I think this is a very, very good book, with characters who are so utterly flawed, sometimes beyond repair (most of the time, actually), with great social insight, with some historical context and something I would like to see more often in Franzen's future books: diverse location, cos fuck you America. Read it.