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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
4/5stars
This was recommended to me by my boyfriend.
I really enjoyed this a lot! The perspective changes and pacing was very good. This book made me INCREDIBLY angry but not in a “this is horrible” way but in a “this is such a shitty situation I hate that this is happening to these characters” way.
This was recommended to me by my boyfriend.
I really enjoyed this a lot! The perspective changes and pacing was very good. This book made me INCREDIBLY angry but not in a “this is horrible” way but in a “this is such a shitty situation I hate that this is happening to these characters” way.
Probably closer to a 7/10 than an 8/10. I get why every book publication loved it, it was something they could easily imagine; a bleeding heart liberal, a rebellious son, a middle-aged rockstar, a dynamic marriage. His horrendous descriptions of women live up to the infamy and holy shit does he love to talk about birds. That being said, it was a moving portrait of a family and their dynamics. Patty is a pretty unforgettable character, but I found her and Walter's relationship to be a little too...easy? She is a headstrong housewife who is painted to be pretty unlovable and he is this "salt of the earth" liberal who doesn't really do anything wrong. If authors could "cover" each other's books like musicians, I would love to see this retold by a female author.
I'm not sure...what the point of this book was. Like all Franzen novels, it wrote characters extremely well and told a very solid story, but...I left the book not really feeling sure about how I felt about any of the characters. I guess I was glad about the ending? Kind of? I suppose I am still processing...not sure I should have wasted my time, though. But I know a bunch of pieces of this book will stick with me for quite some time, and often for me that is the mark of a good writer. So...I guess we'll see. I'll update if I feel I can say more about this at a later date. Hmm.
Holy crap, you guys, this is the best book I've read in a long time! And it had such a great ending. I was afraid that it was going to be great up until the end and then have one of those super-annoying open endings. Ugh, I hate open endings. THIS ENDING was good. The whole thing was good. You should totally read it.
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I am so conflicted by this novel. On the one hand, it is one of the handful of contemporary novels I've read in the last ten years that I feel to be well written. We are clearly in the hands of a master stylist, a formidable intelligence, someone with astounding social insight and armed with immense powers of observation and nuance. There is no doubt that Franzen is an astonishingly talented writer. I actually love him a little bit. He is a feminist, an environmentalist, a bundle of anxiety, a guy who blindfolds himself in order to write (and doesn't make a big thing of it).
But this book has me flummoxed. At the end of the day, the story is about people who, in my opinion, are simply not that interesting. They are upper middle class victims of personal ennui and some pretty substantial sociological shiftings. There is literally not a single woman in this book, for all of Franzen's feminist leanings, who is at all likable (not that characters have to be likable in order to be well-drawn): Patty, the protagonist, is insufferable; Lalitha is nothing but a cliche younger woman worshipping an older man, Connie, intriguing at first in her singleminded devotion to Joey, becomes boring and cloying, and so on and so forth. I found Lalitha and Walter's relationship, which is positioned as "true love," unconvincing in the extreme. I did, however, very much appreciate the nuances of the relationship between Richard Katz and Walter Berglund, and wished to have read more interaction between these two men. I could not, for the life of me, understand what about Patty Berglund drew Katz to her. Could someone help me understand? This is not snark; I truly want to understand what I'm missing. Perhaps, like Walter, I also have too little compassion and pity.
The end of the book--specifically, Walter's existential angst--felt very real and powerful to me. I felt he was most vividly drawn in these pages. But this build-up was dashed, for me, when we learn who the bird sanctuary has been named for. Again, it just didn't resonate for me, as the relationship it alludes to seemed to me false.
Then there is the device of Patty writing her own autobiography. No critic seemed to think this a strained device. In fact, they all thought it brilliant. I think that word was actually used in the Times review: brilliant. Franzen can't help being Franzen, and Patty is not supposed to be the kind of talented writer Franzen is. And yet, he's there at every turn as is almost inevitable. The whole device strained my credulity.
So, yes, exceptionally talented writer. But no, the story did not feel to me to be the storyline of the mythical Great American Novel that the critics had me believing the book would be.
But this book has me flummoxed. At the end of the day, the story is about people who, in my opinion, are simply not that interesting. They are upper middle class victims of personal ennui and some pretty substantial sociological shiftings. There is literally not a single woman in this book, for all of Franzen's feminist leanings, who is at all likable (not that characters have to be likable in order to be well-drawn): Patty, the protagonist, is insufferable; Lalitha is nothing but a cliche younger woman worshipping an older man, Connie, intriguing at first in her singleminded devotion to Joey, becomes boring and cloying, and so on and so forth. I found Lalitha and Walter's relationship, which is positioned as "true love," unconvincing in the extreme. I did, however, very much appreciate the nuances of the relationship between Richard Katz and Walter Berglund, and wished to have read more interaction between these two men. I could not, for the life of me, understand what about Patty Berglund drew Katz to her. Could someone help me understand? This is not snark; I truly want to understand what I'm missing. Perhaps, like Walter, I also have too little compassion and pity.
The end of the book--specifically, Walter's existential angst--felt very real and powerful to me. I felt he was most vividly drawn in these pages. But this build-up was dashed, for me, when we learn who the bird sanctuary has been named for. Again, it just didn't resonate for me, as the relationship it alludes to seemed to me false.
Then there is the device of Patty writing her own autobiography. No critic seemed to think this a strained device. In fact, they all thought it brilliant. I think that word was actually used in the Times review: brilliant. Franzen can't help being Franzen, and Patty is not supposed to be the kind of talented writer Franzen is. And yet, he's there at every turn as is almost inevitable. The whole device strained my credulity.
So, yes, exceptionally talented writer. But no, the story did not feel to me to be the storyline of the mythical Great American Novel that the critics had me believing the book would be.
Too long, too all over the place, too annoying. There might be a bunch of good short books in here but altogether, it did not work for me.
I really enjoy Franzen's sweeping and complicated stories. The Corrections remains my favorite.
I’ve now read two Franzens back to back, after never having heard of him before. Or maybe there’s just too many books out there? Regardless, his characters leap from the page. So much depth of description, richly detailed. And the family dynamics are so painfully laid out in all their angst and beauty. Fabulously read by David Ledoux.
“The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.”
“It’s all circling around the same problem of personal liberties,” Walter said. “People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can’t afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to.”
“The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.”
“It’s all circling around the same problem of personal liberties,” Walter said. “People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can’t afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to.”
An attempt to describe how people and families develop and adapt to their surroundings to survive in the modern era.
I really loved Franzen's previous novel, [b:The Corrections|3805|The Corrections|Jonathan Franzen|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327935887s/3805.jpg|941200], but Freedom just didn't hold a candle next to that one. It is probably unfair to compare the two, but I feel it is necessary at some level. Part of what I loved about The Corrections was the complicated and nuanced interactions between the characters. Thoughts or actions early in the book sometimes didn't make sense until you saw them mirrored later by another character. You could see how completely different circumstances brought out similar behavior from parent and child. There were fascinating parallels between parents, children, and siblings. Freedom tries to get that same feeling, but it came across as forced and artificial to me.
The story revolves around a husband and wife, their two kids, and their best friend from college. All of them have ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs, but little of it seems to mean anything. I didn't find any of the characters compelling enough to care what their outcomes were.
I've read that The Corrections was semi-autobiographical, and I can't help but think Freedom is as well. The obscure rock star character whose one heartfelt album suddenly propels him to fame on the indie circuit probably tracks pretty well with Franzen's own rise in the book world. The problem is, the rock star is always the smartest and most observant person in the room, which taints the book by making it feel like a vanity piece. He's not flawless, to be sure, but it was distracting.
Another bothersome aspect for me were several chapters that were supposedly an autobiography written by one of the characters. The language, style, and detail seemed no different from the rest of the novel. It strained my suspension of disbelief to think she could write that well or with such clarity. And if you're not going to adopt a different voice for those chapters, why bother with the trope of an autobiography at all?
I wasn't expecting to like Freedom as much as The Corrections, but I was expecting it to be different. Instead, it read like a failed attempt to recreate that book, rather than explore new territory. There were moments I enjoyed and some humorous passages, but overall I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
I really loved Franzen's previous novel, [b:The Corrections|3805|The Corrections|Jonathan Franzen|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327935887s/3805.jpg|941200], but Freedom just didn't hold a candle next to that one. It is probably unfair to compare the two, but I feel it is necessary at some level. Part of what I loved about The Corrections was the complicated and nuanced interactions between the characters. Thoughts or actions early in the book sometimes didn't make sense until you saw them mirrored later by another character. You could see how completely different circumstances brought out similar behavior from parent and child. There were fascinating parallels between parents, children, and siblings. Freedom tries to get that same feeling, but it came across as forced and artificial to me.
The story revolves around a husband and wife, their two kids, and their best friend from college. All of them have ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs, but little of it seems to mean anything. I didn't find any of the characters compelling enough to care what their outcomes were.
I've read that The Corrections was semi-autobiographical, and I can't help but think Freedom is as well. The obscure rock star character whose one heartfelt album suddenly propels him to fame on the indie circuit probably tracks pretty well with Franzen's own rise in the book world. The problem is, the rock star is always the smartest and most observant person in the room, which taints the book by making it feel like a vanity piece. He's not flawless, to be sure, but it was distracting.
Another bothersome aspect for me were several chapters that were supposedly an autobiography written by one of the characters. The language, style, and detail seemed no different from the rest of the novel. It strained my suspension of disbelief to think she could write that well or with such clarity. And if you're not going to adopt a different voice for those chapters, why bother with the trope of an autobiography at all?
I wasn't expecting to like Freedom as much as The Corrections, but I was expecting it to be different. Instead, it read like a failed attempt to recreate that book, rather than explore new territory. There were moments I enjoyed and some humorous passages, but overall I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
I would give it 3.5 stars if I could actually. This long book definitely held my interest all the way through and had some thought provoking themes. I saw Oprah said it may be the best book you have ever read (BTW, I had already started reading it before she chose as her book club selection). I think that praise is a bit extreme.