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one4_thebooks 's review for:
The Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
This was my first Franzen book, after being nearly knocked over by the amount of face time and media attention he has gotten as the "superman-author-of-a-century-he-might-as-well-have-hung-the-moon" this past year in 2010.
I liked The Corrections a lot. For the most part.
The story was relatable and at times laugh out loud funny. The whole book is leading up to the gathering of the family at Christmas time in St. Jude, for "one last Christmas." I would've been salivating to get to the last few chapters if Franzen could've stopped babbling about things that were in no way important to the plot in the last 2/3 of the book.
Chip, one of the sons the story centers on, gets caught up in some less than reputable business in a Europe for a few months. That's about as much as we needed to know. Franzen goes ON AND ON AND ON about the happenings and politics of this particular country for what seemed like about 4000 pages. Let it go, man. We get it, you're smart.
Honestly, the book felt like it was growing pages after I hit the 300-350 mark. I had to skip to get to the last chapter, which by that point, I didn't care nearly as much about because he lost me with the eastern Europe mumbo-jumbo.
All of that being said, I do think this book deserves a spot on a list of current books that will one day be counted as classics. Some really amazing writing being done here, when there's not a ton of that being done today.
I liked The Corrections a lot. For the most part.
The story was relatable and at times laugh out loud funny. The whole book is leading up to the gathering of the family at Christmas time in St. Jude, for "one last Christmas." I would've been salivating to get to the last few chapters if Franzen could've stopped babbling about things that were in no way important to the plot in the last 2/3 of the book.
Chip, one of the sons the story centers on, gets caught up in some less than reputable business in a Europe for a few months. That's about as much as we needed to know. Franzen goes ON AND ON AND ON about the happenings and politics of this particular country for what seemed like about 4000 pages. Let it go, man. We get it, you're smart.
Honestly, the book felt like it was growing pages after I hit the 300-350 mark. I had to skip to get to the last chapter, which by that point, I didn't care nearly as much about because he lost me with the eastern Europe mumbo-jumbo.
All of that being said, I do think this book deserves a spot on a list of current books that will one day be counted as classics. Some really amazing writing being done here, when there's not a ton of that being done today.