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?).
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
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
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."
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!
Helpful Score: 1
When I perused the reviews of "The Corrections", it is hard to believe that I have read the same text!! I believe that after reading you will either LOVE or HATE this book... nothing in between. I could not put this book down. Jonathan Franzen explores, in a hilarious way, the impact of ones upbringing in a dysfunctional family. The members of the Lambert family are certainly damaged and sad, however, the stories message is ultimately one of understanding and forgiveness. I strongly suggest that you read the book and form your own opinion.
Helpful Score: 1
A most interesting novel that depicts a family whose problems seem, at first, so dysfunctional, actually illustrate the growth and maturing of family relations. I found parts of the novel difficult to read through but those sections were needed to understand the family members as individuals. This is not an easy read but a read that sets one to thinking about life and one's own family and how it functions. Especially enjoyed the ending where the family members rediscover what its like to be a family.
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.
Helpful Score: 1
Jonathan Franzen uses an interesting and intellectual design of writing to orchestrate this extremely complicated novel about midwestern life. While there were points of life, interest, thoughts, desire and the ever-present worrisome guilt tripping mother that every midwestern girl like myself can relate to, much of the book seemed obsolete. Proofing could have removed 1/3 of the novel and still had a good read.
It is complicated, complex, involved, self indulgent, sex addict, and had a few laughs in between. Franzen does do a great job of showing just what has happened to all the mid-century Midwest WASP children once we grew up and got away!
It is complicated, complex, involved, self indulgent, sex addict, and had a few laughs in between. Franzen does do a great job of showing just what has happened to all the mid-century Midwest WASP children once we grew up and got away!
Helpful Score: 1
A witty page turner!
Helpful Score: 1
From:
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
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. --Tim Appelo
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
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. --Tim Appelo
Helpful Score: 1
This book was so way over-hyped, and by so many intelligent lovely people whose opinions I normally tend to agree with. To quote Alfred Lambert, "Well! I'm not following. I mean, I'd leave it to your discretion, but this makes no sense." If this book were 300 pages shorter, minus most of Franzen's intense tangential forays into cryptic jargon peculiar to matters medical, academic, financial, and Scandinavian (to name just a few), it would be so much better. Yes, the title is clever, and refers to different applications throughout the story, I get that, but the point is so belabored!
I don't hate The Corrections, I actually liked reading about the dysfunctional Lambert family (mother Enid, father Alfred, and damaged adult children Gary, Chip and Denise). Even though I was bored by Franzen's superfluous babble and miffed by his pretentiousness, in between he managed to make me laugh out loud, like at Al's demented, "Chip, I don't understand this blanket, CAN YOU HELP ME?"
I don't hate The Corrections, I actually liked reading about the dysfunctional Lambert family (mother Enid, father Alfred, and damaged adult children Gary, Chip and Denise). Even though I was bored by Franzen's superfluous babble and miffed by his pretentiousness, in between he managed to make me laugh out loud, like at Al's demented, "Chip, I don't understand this blanket, CAN YOU HELP ME?"
Helpful Score: 1
I tried very hard to get through this book but failed miserably. Jonathan Franzen is one of the most arrogant writers I have had the misfortune to read in a very long time. Most arrogant writers are very good, unfortunately, Mr. Franzen lacks any talent at all.
Helpful Score: 1
It's epic. It's wistful. It's moving. The story of a family and their individual foibles. Read it.
Helpful Score: 1
With all the awards this book has won, I don't have to tell you it is a well written novel. I will tell you it is a great story. An entertaining tale of a middle aged woman, Enid, who lives in the Midwest. Enid brings her family together for one more Christmas before her aging husband, Alfred, succumbs to Parkinson's disease. Poor Alfred is loosing his mind, son Chip is a wanna be screen writer/punk, daughter Denise is trying to recover from a failed marriage, and son Gary is the corporate stooge with a dysfunctional family. This is a story about everyone's family. Everything that is wrong in American and everything that is right. This is a funny, satirical look at us!
Outstanding.
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.
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.
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.
I had such a hard time reading this book, but forced myself to finish it because I hate to start a book and not finish. I had a difficult time relating to the story and didn't like Franzen's writing style. Took me way to long to finish the book and found myself trying way too much to try to understand the storyline. It just didn't seem like a believable story.
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.
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.
Intense, prose-packed character study and family drama.
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.
One of the most talked about novels and writers in recent years. Many "best of" lists. A nice oversized edition. Try it!
Very very detailed and painstakingly constructed characters. A very artfully written book. Not a great ending.
Involved story of one family, worth reading to see what you think of this well-reviewed book.
This book was way too long and drawn out. The characters were great but I was bored throughout the whole book.
Lives up to the hype. It is a well written, interesting story with emotional backbone. A good read.
Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections is a bold novel about a dysfunctional American family. Alfred the patriarch is going downhill with Parkinson's disease; his wife Enid is trying to gather the three grown children for 'one last Christmas' in the fictional Midwestern town of St. Jude. Gary, Chip, and Denise have their own issues. Franzen excels at intense character studies that criss-cross and cut into each other's narratives, while at the same time critiquing the excesses he sees in American culture. Although the intensity weans a bit at the end, it's a well-told story of fundamentally unhappy, depressed, and angry people.
Interesting.
Interesting book. Not one of my favorites.
Franzen is one of these authors that the trendy people all praise....the same type of people who claim to watch only PBS and listen to only NPR...ect...it's trendy to "like his books" like it's hip to claim that you listen to all of Bob Dylan's records or claim to read William Shakespear often( which they don't...but tell everybody they do just to sound sophisticated. I don't buy it....it's boring overlong soap opera type drivel that you are no better for reading through.
An interesting and broad story of a family. Not without it's plot and character flaws, but considering it's scope and depth, quite an accomplishment. Definitely worth reading, particularly for aspiring writers.
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.
Great book!
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.
good study in family dynamics. the discription of some of the difficulties in dealing with parkinsons disease were very good.
A surprisingly good read. The story centers around a mid-western family. The characters are fully formed. The situations are tragic, but sometimes comical.
A bit long, but good. Hang i there and when reflection on the story, you will realize you enjoyed it.
It is a mind bogling book......a huge, blustery, sweeping arc of life. Fascinating writing.
Loved the book. Hate to say that I saw a lot of my own family story here...!
A good very detailed read. Family at it's most real.
A strange, raw family novel. Too much turmoil for me! Very well writen
*****Spoiler Alert*****
Three weeks ago I woke up and simultaneously realized I was in a long-term S&M relationship, I was unhappy, and I had to see it through to the end. The clincher was that the relationship was with this Franzen book that I was determined to finish. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't change it - Franzen would lead me on and torture me, teasing me with a plot, taking me to the edge with interest and getting me wrapped up in a character only to drop me hard with the end of a chapter and start cold and impersonal with the next. I hated him. He'd do it over and over. And I'd keep letting him. It was emotional torture. Denise and Robin's relationship had nothing on his and mine.
Finally it got so that my heart just wasn't in it anymore. I couldn't follow Chip to Lithuania or Gary back to St. Jude for Christmas. I didn't even care if Enid would stay addicted to illegal drugs. Alfred's awkward enema scene in the basement did nothing for me. I didn't care about this family; their problems seemed petty. I just wanted it all to end. All the characters got what they deserved in the end - shells of lives.
I don't plan on going back to Franzen. But never say never.
Three weeks ago I woke up and simultaneously realized I was in a long-term S&M relationship, I was unhappy, and I had to see it through to the end. The clincher was that the relationship was with this Franzen book that I was determined to finish. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't change it - Franzen would lead me on and torture me, teasing me with a plot, taking me to the edge with interest and getting me wrapped up in a character only to drop me hard with the end of a chapter and start cold and impersonal with the next. I hated him. He'd do it over and over. And I'd keep letting him. It was emotional torture. Denise and Robin's relationship had nothing on his and mine.
Finally it got so that my heart just wasn't in it anymore. I couldn't follow Chip to Lithuania or Gary back to St. Jude for Christmas. I didn't even care if Enid would stay addicted to illegal drugs. Alfred's awkward enema scene in the basement did nothing for me. I didn't care about this family; their problems seemed petty. I just wanted it all to end. All the characters got what they deserved in the end - shells of lives.
I don't plan on going back to Franzen. But never say never.
Funny, thought provoking, and a page turner. Loved it, ordering more of Franzen's books!
This book was very hard for me to read. I just couldn't get into it at all so after a quarter of the way through I just gave up.
If you thought you were the only one with odd acting aging parents and dysfunctional siblings, this book makes you feel like you're not alone. A fun book to read!
I don't know............too many metaphores, and not too original.
A mother wants to bring her adult children home for one last Christmas. Her husband is losing his battle with Parkinson's disease and their children have lives of their own. It makes for interesting reading.
doesn't live up to the hype i'd heard about it beforehand. well written but not a single likable character in the book
"Dinner of Revenge" (starting on page 251) is one of my favorite scenes in any book, ever. Vivid and painfully funny. Loved this book.
Immensely entertaining story.
Hilarious and tragic novel; perfect if you have parents or siblings that drive you nuts!
A great novel, not always easy to read, but well worth it.
Read this for a book club. If not for that, I don't think I ever would have gotten through it. However, once done...well worth the time. A midwestern mom tries to bring her family home for the holidays.
A comic, tragic epic stretching from the Midwest of the midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, The Corrections brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision witht he era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed.
After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parksinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family next to the catastrophes of their own lives. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on bringing the family together for one las Christmas at home.
After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parksinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family next to the catastrophes of their own lives. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on bringing the family together for one las Christmas at home.
When I read this book, I enjoyed the story and the characterizations, but in the back of my mind, I kept thinking "This is the guy who made a big stink about being in Oprah's book club. Elitist prat." Despite that, it was an enjoyable book.
Too "wordy" and very slow.
I tried to like this book; however, I found the plot to be bleak and the very opposite of noteworthy. There is not one likeable character doing one kind, charitable or generous act during the entire plodding book. I am not looking for an uplifting book with a "message" or a puerile happy ending, but I would like to think that there is more to life and living than is represented in this book. I like books that make me think while I am reading them and, if I am truly fortunate, when I have finished reading them. Jonathan Franzen has created a goup of greedy, self-serving characters who never deviate from our initial introduction to them. The author has talent - the characters are well defined and the plot makes sense within the confines of the structure created by Franzen. The world is surely peopled by persons who belie his definition of living within a family. This book saddened my heart.
How complicated life is. What an intense read.
The story was fine, kept my interest, but the ending sucked. He had too many detailed life stories going and there was no way to wrap them all up without making the book 1000 pages so he just let them all kind of drop. I'm not one who has to have everything neatly sewn up but the way he did it was just kind of annoying, it seemed like he was just done a whipped the last chapter out in a day.
Winner of the National Book Award and a National Bestseller. A comic, tragic epic stretching from the Midwest to Wall Street to Eastern Europe. After almost fifty years of motherhood, Enid is ready to have some fun. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on bringing her wayward family together for one last Christmas at home.
A story about a family - took a while to get through.
Did not like this book. Honestly could not get past page 25 and had to stop. Still canot understand what the hype was about this best seller.
Awful....terribly overrated.
I picked this up at a used book store. The binding is cracked at pages 68/69, but it is not falling apart.
First off, the book is way too long. Then, there are numerous sub-plots and assorted minor characters. Finally, there are digressions - some of which are weird.
While the writing is interesting and the main characters well fleshed out, overall, the novel isn't worth the reader's effort.
Perhaps - with major editing - this work could be salvageable.
While the writing is interesting and the main characters well fleshed out, overall, the novel isn't worth the reader's effort.
Perhaps - with major editing - this work could be salvageable.
AUDIO BOOK ON TAPE
9 hours on 6 cassettes, read by Dylan Baker
A lengthy abridgement of the author's best selling and award winning novel.
9 hours on 6 cassettes, read by Dylan Baker
A lengthy abridgement of the author's best selling and award winning novel.
Hardback. A wonderful read.
This is a beautiful gift book. Jonathan Franzen's third novel, The Corrections, is a great work of art and a grandly entertaining overture to our new century: a bold, comic, tragic, deeply moving family drama that stretches from the Midwest at mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of greed and globalism. Franzen brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty, of Cub Scouts and Christmas cookies and sexual inhibitions, into brilliant collision with the modern absurdities of brain science, home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and the anti-gravity New Economy. With The Corrections, Franzen emerges as one of our premier interpreters of American society and the American soul.
Enid Lambert is terribly, terribly anxious. Although she would never admit it to her neighbors or her three grown children, her husband, Alfred, is losing his grip on reality. Maybe it's the medication that Alfred takes for his Parkinson's disease, or maybe it's his negative attitude, but he spends his days brooding in the basement and committing shadowy, unspeakable acts. More and more often, he doesn't seem to understand a word Enid says.
Trouble is also brewing in the lives of Enid's children. Her older son, Gary, a banker in Philadelphia, has turned cruel and materialistic and is trying to force his parents out of their old house and into a tiny apartment. The middle child, Chip, has suddenly and for no good reason quit his exciting job as a professor at D------ College and moved to New York City, where he seems to be pursuing a "transgressive" lifestyle and writing some sort of screenplay. Meanwhile the baby of the family, Denise, has escaped her disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man--or so Gary hints.
Enid, who loves to have fun, can still look forward to a final family Christmas and to the ten-day Nordic Pleasurelines Luxury Fall Color Cruise that she and Alfred are about to embark on. But even these few remaining joys are threatened by her husband's growing confusion and unsteadiness. As Alfred enters his final decline, the Lamberts must face the failures, secrets, and long-buried hurts that haunt them as a family if they are to make the corrections that each desperately needs.
Enid Lambert is terribly, terribly anxious. Although she would never admit it to her neighbors or her three grown children, her husband, Alfred, is losing his grip on reality. Maybe it's the medication that Alfred takes for his Parkinson's disease, or maybe it's his negative attitude, but he spends his days brooding in the basement and committing shadowy, unspeakable acts. More and more often, he doesn't seem to understand a word Enid says.
Trouble is also brewing in the lives of Enid's children. Her older son, Gary, a banker in Philadelphia, has turned cruel and materialistic and is trying to force his parents out of their old house and into a tiny apartment. The middle child, Chip, has suddenly and for no good reason quit his exciting job as a professor at D------ College and moved to New York City, where he seems to be pursuing a "transgressive" lifestyle and writing some sort of screenplay. Meanwhile the baby of the family, Denise, has escaped her disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man--or so Gary hints.
Enid, who loves to have fun, can still look forward to a final family Christmas and to the ten-day Nordic Pleasurelines Luxury Fall Color Cruise that she and Alfred are about to embark on. But even these few remaining joys are threatened by her husband's growing confusion and unsteadiness. As Alfred enters his final decline, the Lamberts must face the failures, secrets, and long-buried hurts that haunt them as a family if they are to make the corrections that each desperately needs.
Amazon.com Review
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. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
If some authors are masters of suspense, others postmodern verbal acrobats, and still others complex-character pointillists, few excel in all three arenas. In his long-awaited third novel, Franzen does. Unlike his previous works, The 27th City (1988) and Strong Motion (1992), which tackled St. Louis and Boston, respectively, this one skips from city to city (New York; St. Jude; Philadelphia; Vilnius, Lithuania) as it follows the delamination of the Lambert family Alfred, once a rigid disciplinarian, flounders against Parkinson's-induced dementia; Enid, his loyal and embittered wife, lusts for the perfect Midwestern Christmas; Denise, their daughter, launches the hippest restaurant in Philly; and Gary, their oldest son, grapples with depression, while Chip, his brother, attempts to shore his eroding self-confidence by joining forces with a self-mocking, Eastern-Bloc politician. As in his other novels, Franzen blends these personal dramas with expert technical cartwheels and savage commentary on larger social issues, such as the imbecility of laissez-faire parenting and the farcical nature of U.S.-Third World relations. The result is a book made of equal parts fury and humor, one that takes a dry-eyed look at our culture, at our pains and insecurities, while offering hope that, occasionally at least, we can reach some kind of understanding. This is, simply, a masterpiece. Agent, Susan Golomb. (Sept.)Forecast: Franzen has always been a writer's writer and his previous novels have earned critical admiration, but his sales haven't yet reached the level of, say, Don DeLillo at his hottest. Still, if the ancillary rights sales and the buzz at BEA are any indication, The Corrections should be his breakout book. Its varied subject matter will endear it to a genre-crossing section of fans
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. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
If some authors are masters of suspense, others postmodern verbal acrobats, and still others complex-character pointillists, few excel in all three arenas. In his long-awaited third novel, Franzen does. Unlike his previous works, The 27th City (1988) and Strong Motion (1992), which tackled St. Louis and Boston, respectively, this one skips from city to city (New York; St. Jude; Philadelphia; Vilnius, Lithuania) as it follows the delamination of the Lambert family Alfred, once a rigid disciplinarian, flounders against Parkinson's-induced dementia; Enid, his loyal and embittered wife, lusts for the perfect Midwestern Christmas; Denise, their daughter, launches the hippest restaurant in Philly; and Gary, their oldest son, grapples with depression, while Chip, his brother, attempts to shore his eroding self-confidence by joining forces with a self-mocking, Eastern-Bloc politician. As in his other novels, Franzen blends these personal dramas with expert technical cartwheels and savage commentary on larger social issues, such as the imbecility of laissez-faire parenting and the farcical nature of U.S.-Third World relations. The result is a book made of equal parts fury and humor, one that takes a dry-eyed look at our culture, at our pains and insecurities, while offering hope that, occasionally at least, we can reach some kind of understanding. This is, simply, a masterpiece. Agent, Susan Golomb. (Sept.)Forecast: Franzen has always been a writer's writer and his previous novels have earned critical admiration, but his sales haven't yet reached the level of, say, Don DeLillo at his hottest. Still, if the ancillary rights sales and the buzz at BEA are any indication, The Corrections should be his breakout book. Its varied subject matter will endear it to a genre-crossing section of fans
I did not read the book. I listened to it on audio cassette. I found the book to be somewhat boring. It is about a dysfunctional family.
What a distfuctional family
I read this book when it was apart of Oprah's book club. I have never had to force myself to read a book ever! Not even in High School Junior AP Literature. This was awful from beginning to end. Johnathon Franzen can't write, I don't care what the critics say about him. It was obvious too, because he knew it that is why he refused to go on the Oprah show after the month of the book club.
I wouldn't recommend this to my worst enemy!
~Andie <>
I wouldn't recommend this to my worst enemy!
~Andie <>
