Even if you didn’t read the recent Time magazine cover story, you may have noticed one of the seemingly hundreds of articles and blog postings praising the work of Jonathan Franzen and salivating over the release of his latest novel. Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections is considered by many to be the best work of fiction produced in the last decade. Fans of Franzen’s were provided a collection of essays in 2002 and a memoir in 2006, but waited expectantly for his next novel, hoping that it might provide the same humor, pain, and pathos as his previous novel had. Today, the wait is over. Nine years after penning his Corrections, Franzen has written Freedom, and it is as rich and rewarding as anything he has ever done; the characters are fully realized, the backdrop is perfectly captured, and the story is playful and sad, as heartbreaking as it is hopeful.
This is the story of the Berglunds, a disenchanted and deteriorating middle class Minnesota family. Walter, the father, is a do-gooder with a do-gooders potential flaws; pretentiousness, preachiness, and the possibility of taking oneself far too seriously. Patty, his wife, may have motives that are less pure, but more honest. Neither of them can be placed, categorically, into “good” or “bad”, but struggle to be one while being tempted by the other. They are what fictional characters too often aren’t; human. Two children, Joey and Jessica, who could have been written as caricatures or set pieces, are, instead, as complicated and confused as their parents. Add rock star friends and lovers (Rick –Walters’s friend, Patty’s lover) and passive aggressively warring neighbors, and you’ve got yourself a ballgame that we call the pursuit of the American Dream.
Readers love Franzen because they know, and often are, the people he writes about, and are able to gain further access and insight into what it means to be human by spending time with the people and places he describes. Franzen does what so many writers fail to do, he brings his stories to life and allows us to live within them, if only for awhile. We leave better able to evaluate our own motives and values, and to possibly make the corrections that our own lives require.
–Kester Smith
Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Freedom, was released today.
BookPeople 