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the corrections
the corrections
Author: jonathan franzen
ISBN: 155852
Rating:
  • Currently 1.5/5 Stars.
 2

1.5 stars, based on 2 ratings
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Write a Review
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Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed the corrections on + 44 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 7
A fascinating portrait of a midwestern family... aging. Grown children, their interactions with their parents, spouses, etc. Sad and trenchant. Like John Updike, but less wordy, like Anne Tyler, but less quirky. Well sketched characters. Enjoyable, but hard to swallow in parts (recognize too much of my own family, maybe?).
reviewed the corrections on + 10 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
Like watching a train wreck! People seem to either love or hate this book. I got so connected to the characters, I found it difficult to read because they make such bad, heart wrenching decisions. As The Miami Herald wrote, "Wonderously devastating."
reviewed the corrections on + 533 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
Jonathan Franzen's exhilarating novel The Corrections tells a spellbinding story with sexy comic brio, and evokes a quirky family akin to Anne Tyler's, only bitter. Franzen's great at describing Christmas homecomings gone awry, cruise-ship follies, self-deluded academics, breast-obsessed screenwriters, stodgy old farts and edgy Tribeca bohemians equally at sea in their lives, and the mad, bad, dangerous worlds of the Internet boom and the fissioning post-Soviet East.
All five members of the Lambert family get their due, as everybody's lives swirl out of control. Paterfamilias Alfred is slipping into dementia, even as one of his inventions inspires a pharmaceutical giant to revolutionize treatment of his disease. His stubborn wife, Enid, specializes in denial; so do their kids, each in an idiosyncratic way. Their hepcat son, Chip, lost a college sinecure by seducing a student, and his new career as a screenwriter is in peril. Chip's sister, Denise, is a chic chef perpetually in hot water, romantically speaking; banker brother Gary wonders if his stifling marriage is driving him nuts. We inhabit these troubled minds in turn, sinking into sorrow punctuated by laughter, reveling in Franzen's satirical eye:

Gary in recent years had observed, with plate tectonically cumulative anxiety, that population was continuing to flow out of the Midwest and toward the cooler coasts.... Gary wished that all further migration [could] be banned and all Midwesterners encouraged to revert to eating pasty foods and wearing dowdy clothes and playing board games, in order that a strategic national reserve of cluelessness might be maintained, a wilderness of taste which would enable people of privilege, like himself, to feel extremely civilized in perpetuity.
Franzen is funny and on the money. This book puts him on the literary map.
AMAZON.COM REVIEW
reviewed the corrections on + 107 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
This winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist made Time magazine's Top 100 English language novels. It is a sweeping family epic that is both both comic and tragic. Enid has lived with boredom for too long. She's ready to spread her wings. Unfortunately her husband, Alfred, is becoming increasingly frightened of the world as he slides down into the horrors of Parkinson's disease. Their three children have busy lives and crises of their own and find it difficult to make time for their parents, especially since they've all flown the coop and moved away. Enid longs for just one last Christmas together as a family. This is a masterful and wholely original novel that satirizes modern life while plumbing it's heartbreaking humanity. A must read!
reviewed the corrections on + 6 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
I have to connect to the characters when I read a book. I could not feel for anyone in the story and instead focused on the writing style. I don't enjoy that so I put it down.
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reviewed the corrections on + 5 more book reviews
Funny, thought provoking, and a page turner. Loved it, ordering more of Franzen's books!
motherofboys247 avatar reviewed the corrections on
Intense, prose-packed character study and family drama.
reviewed the corrections on + 3 more book reviews
A great look at a modern family. While depressing at time it is also heartwarming and makes you think more about people and what may be going on on the inside. Similar to Freedom but a bit more downbeat, but a great read.
Isabel-Batteria avatar reviewed the corrections on + 70 more book reviews
Kind of heavy prose. It took me a while to read it to the end. I dragged it a little (hence the "heavyness"). I think I should read it again, in another time of my life.
reviewed the corrections on + 2 more book reviews
Interesting.
reviewed the corrections on + 5 more book reviews
Interesting book. Not one of my favorites.
armywf1998 avatar reviewed the corrections on + 4 more book reviews
This book was way too long and drawn out. The characters were great but I was bored throughout the whole book.
boomerbooklover avatar reviewed the corrections on + 441 more book reviews
Novel about a mid-western U.S. family. A mother stuck in middle America lifestyle; a father rapidly declining mentally, and three grown children. It has its moments but includes a lot of extraneous prose. If you like this author's works, or Oprah picks, you will probably like this one.
sophiespencermom avatar reviewed the corrections on + 9 more book reviews
Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't stand this book. Franzen's writing is pretentious and he seems not to understand the function of a period to end sentences. There was one sentence around page 40 that lasted longer than a page! I gave up. There are too many good books out there to waste time on one where none of the characters are people I like or respect, and where the author drones on about a pencil sitting on a desk.
reviewed the corrections on
Lives up to the hype. It is a well written, interesting story with emotional backbone. A good read.
Tata avatar reviewed the corrections on + 135 more book reviews
Pat Conroy says: "This is the brightest, boldest and most ambitious novel I have read in many years". I enjoyed listening to this audio; it was an interesting book.
cheermom140 avatar reviewed the corrections on + 85 more book reviews
If "The Corrections" were a person, this person would be diagnosed with multiple personalities.

The story is HYSTERICALLY FUNNY ... Chip steals $78 worth of salmon by stuffing it down his pants in a high priced NY deli - this section of the book made me laugh out loud; ABSOLUTELY REVOLTING... Alfred has hours of conversation with, how should I put this delicately, a piece of fecal matter that has mysteriously rolled out of his adult diaper; SYMPATHETIC ... Chip is forced to sit at a dinner table for hours until he eats his dinner of liver, mashed rutabaga and beet greens and finally falls asleep on his plate; TEDIOUSLY BORING ... Enid's and Alfred's conversation on their cruise with their Norwegian dinner companions is reminiscent of watching other people's home movies ...and many other different adjectives will certainly come to your mind while you are reading.

While to me, this book is not the 5-star masterpiece that some reviewers have rated, it is certainly not the horrible book that others have lambasted as the worst book ever written. It is certainly worth reading and many parts are very entertaining. Others come a bit too close for comfort - almost like the author was hovering near your family for inspiration!

The narrator does deserve 5 stars - he is amazing and gives every character a different, distinctive voice. If you haven't been able to get through the book reading it, it might be better to listen to it.
reviewed the corrections on + 11 more book reviews
For all of the hype this book received, it could not live up to it. If you like stories about depressed and dysfunctional families, (and I know people who do!) you're in for a treat.
Dixie avatar reviewed the corrections on + 179 more book reviews
Great book!


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