Take a photo of a barcode or cover
Given that I relished this book and read it voraciously, perhaps a 5 star rating is more accurate. Franzen gives us an intimate portrait of the main characters, Walter and Patty, from the time of their meeting at college and throughout two decades of marriage. Their two children,Walter's best friend, a charismatic rocker, and Walter's beautiful, exotic assistant are all portrayed with insightful realism.
This is a book about the inner lives of people, maybe more so than the outer, and Franzen goes deep into the family history and childhood upbringing of his main characters. Their pasts are fraught with the skeletons found in many closets- alcoholism, deep resentment, date rape, codependence, disconnection.
One of my favorite lines in the book was, in talking about Walter's grandfather, who came to America from Sweden- "He became another data point in the American experiment of self-government, an experiment statistically skewed from the outset, because it wasn't the people with sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn't get along well with others."
That got me thinking about our ancestors and the things they've passed on to us, here in America.
Family systems, family behaviors all woven in a story of one marriage, two people and all their complexities. Interspersed in the telling is the idea of longing and lust within a troubled marriage, the idealization and fantasy of forbidden fruit, the decimation of rainforests and mountaintops in the greed for oil, the obscene greed of those who deal in war, the nonexistent WMDs that led us to war, the hypocrisy of many so-called environmental groups, and on and on.
I have not told you the plot, nor will I. But by the end of this fairly long novel (562 pages) there is healing and redemption. Two of my personal favorite themes. Read this book.
This is a book about the inner lives of people, maybe more so than the outer, and Franzen goes deep into the family history and childhood upbringing of his main characters. Their pasts are fraught with the skeletons found in many closets- alcoholism, deep resentment, date rape, codependence, disconnection.
One of my favorite lines in the book was, in talking about Walter's grandfather, who came to America from Sweden- "He became another data point in the American experiment of self-government, an experiment statistically skewed from the outset, because it wasn't the people with sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn't get along well with others."
That got me thinking about our ancestors and the things they've passed on to us, here in America.
Family systems, family behaviors all woven in a story of one marriage, two people and all their complexities. Interspersed in the telling is the idea of longing and lust within a troubled marriage, the idealization and fantasy of forbidden fruit, the decimation of rainforests and mountaintops in the greed for oil, the obscene greed of those who deal in war, the nonexistent WMDs that led us to war, the hypocrisy of many so-called environmental groups, and on and on.
I have not told you the plot, nor will I. But by the end of this fairly long novel (562 pages) there is healing and redemption. Two of my personal favorite themes. Read this book.