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There's no denying Jonathan Franzen is a very good writer, who writes with an acerbic intelligence that I wouldn't want trained on my own human frailties. And that’s definitely what Franzen susses out of his characters. Yes, they are unlikeable to a one, but he gets inside each and brings out all that is messy and sympathetic and 100% human about all of them. He's a delicate limner of swampy, unwholesome family dynamics and love triangles. But this is a BIG book. As it takes on the disintegration of one family in particular, it has a larger point they illustrate: how the vaunted American freedom can be poisonous, not just on a personal level, but also on a larger scale. Franzen looks at the consequences of each terrible lone choice in aggregate—the cars we drive, the pets we keep (or fail to keep), the cheap energy we consume—and the environmental costs are devastating. He deftly portrays our refusal to consider those consequences, and our indignation at the very idea that anyone dare try to impose any limits or curbs on our appetites. A family novel, a marriage novel, an environmental novel, a novel about America and who moves here to become an American: this novel is loaded for bear. Can we climb out of this hole, and learn to love and care for what we have instead of continuing the quest for more, more, more? Franzen seems not exactly optimistic, but the novel holds out some small hope at the end for a reconciliation with reality. You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.