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In spite of good reviews and lots of hype, since I did not care for the two other Franzen books that I have read, this is not a book I would have read. However, it was a book club selection. I started reading Purity before Christmas, then put it aside with no intention of going back to it. The library let me keep renewing it and encouraged by a friend (who was not crazy about it either), I finally finished it on my lunch break the day of book club.
The book was too long, filled with details, often sordid, that I did not care anything about. I also did not care about any of the characters, a strange bunch of jerks. I don't have to like or identify with characters in a book, but I do have to have some interest in what happens to them, which I did not in Purity.
It is interesting that none of the other six women in book club liked the book.
"So many Jonathans. A plague of literary Jonathans. If you read the New York Times Book Review, you'd think it was the most common male name in America. Synonymous with talent, greatness. Ambition, vitality." (207)
This was the only part of the book I recalled. On first reading, I thought that Franzen was poking fun at himself. But on second reading, perhaps he was making fun of his readers.
The book was too long, filled with details, often sordid, that I did not care anything about. I also did not care about any of the characters, a strange bunch of jerks. I don't have to like or identify with characters in a book, but I do have to have some interest in what happens to them, which I did not in Purity.
It is interesting that none of the other six women in book club liked the book.
"So many Jonathans. A plague of literary Jonathans. If you read the New York Times Book Review, you'd think it was the most common male name in America. Synonymous with talent, greatness. Ambition, vitality." (207)
This was the only part of the book I recalled. On first reading, I thought that Franzen was poking fun at himself. But on second reading, perhaps he was making fun of his readers.