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The Corrections (Paperback)

by Jonathan Franzen (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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  • This item: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

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    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
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Product details

  • Paperback: 672 pages
  • Publisher: HarperPerennial; New edition edition (2 Jul 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007232446
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007232444
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 4.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 11,637 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

'A book which is funny, moving, generous, brutal and intelligent, and which poses the ultimate question: what life is for? And that is as much as anyone could ask.' Blake Morrison, Guardian 'For anyone who has ever found themselves guiltily yearning for an Anne Tyler while in the middle of an Updike or Wolfe. The Lamberts are utterly believable, and once they have all told their stories you can't help but sympathise with them. Be prepared to be moved.' Laurence Phelan, Independent on Sunday 'Compelling. A pleasure from beginning to end. Franzen, in one leap, has put himself into the league of Updike and Roth.' David Sexton, Evening Standard 'A novel of outstanding sympathy, wit, moral intelligence and pathos, a family saga told with stylistic brio and psychological and political insight. No British novelist is currently writing at this pitch.' Jeremy Treglowen, Financial Times 'Impossible to dislike, an unpretentious page-turner.' Zadie Smith, Guardian Book of the Year '"The Corrections" is a wonderful book. Every page simmers with wit, close observation and intelligence. Franzen has delivered as wounding and thoughtful an indictment of contemporary existence as it is possible to make.' John Burnside, Scotsman 'As good as anything I've ever read.' Rachel Cusk, Daily Telegraph Books of the Year


Product Description

The winner of the National Book Award, the New York Times No.1 Bestseller and the worldwide literary sensation, 'The Corrections' has established itself as a truly great American novel. The Lamberts -- Enid and Alfred and their three grown-up children -- are a troubled family living in a troubled age. Alfred is ill and as his condition worsens the whole family must face the failures, secrets and long-buried hurts that haunt them if they are to make the corrections that each desperately needs. Stretching from the Midwest in the mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of globalised greed, The Corrections brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty into wild collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and New Economy millionaires. It confirms Jonathan Franzen's position as one of the most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul currently at work.
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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars What an absolute gem of a novel..., 23 Mar 2008
By M. AL-KHATER "mmk" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
The 653 page novel entitled "The Corrections" is a unique work of fiction. It is unique because first of all, it is a big novel, my hands literally got tired from holding it whilst in bed before going to sleep every night. I honestly think my biceps grew a bit bigger because of how heavy the book was. It is also unique because there is no "real" story; there is no "real" over-arching plot or narrative to it. The Corrections is essentially 5 stories each concerning one of five characters who are all connected by the very fact that they are members of the same family; to be more specific, the Lambert family.The 5 plots each have cameos from the other four family members and you will sometimes get to see the same situation but from the other character's perspective accompanied with their own commentary and view on what is actually happening. Franzen managed to pull this time jumping off and made it seem seamless.

After reading three of Dean Koontz's books (in a relatively short period, at least to me), I grew a bit frustrated for I kept feeling this totally predictable sensation when reading stories. I kept seeing a common theme not only in Dean Koontz's books but in almost all fiction novels I have read till now. A totally cliched, everything will end up fine in the end, kind of feeling. And if everything did not end with a disguised form of "and they lived happily ever after", they just end with a completely anti-climax ending that simply ruins the whole novel for me (an example of this would be Douglas Coupland's JPod). Another example would be where the main character will always look like he/she is either going to die or is in a predicament he/she cannot escape from unscathed, only to miraculously escape from it truimphantly - it's a common theme I have come to expect from such novels (an example of that besides ANY Dean Koontz book would be Dan Brown's books, and more specifically, Angels and Demons where the main character (Robert Langdon) was at one point towards the end of the story pushed out of a helicopter and he survived the fall by using his PANTS as a PARACHUTE... completely ruined an otherwise excellent book).

Franzen managed to reignite my otherwise dwindiling interest in novels by completely avoiding the aforementioned common theme landmines in his novel. He managed to do that by not having a "real" overarching plot. There are no real answers given to the complex issues that he deals with in his book, there is no patronizing "and they all lived happily ever after". It's a real story with real characters that are imperfect just like everyone of us. I will give a small description of the five characters without mentioning any spoilers.

Enid and Alfred are the parents of Gary, Chip, and Denise (in chronological order). Alfred was an engineer in this company concerned with making railway tracks. He quit his job just 6 months before he was entitled for retirement. Enid is the housewife who used to try her hardest to deal with her stubborn husband who not only quit his job he has worked on for years, but done so without telling her the reasons for quitting. Also, she refuses to acknowledge that Alfred has Parkinson's (I keep confusing it with Alzhiemer's for some reason) disease now. As a matter of fact, the story in essence relates to everyone, including Alfred himself, denying the existence of his condition until it gets too much to simply look passed...

Gary, the oldest son, is a successful man living with his beautiful wife and three boys in the city. His wife does not like his mom, Enid, very much. I will not say anymore about him or his plot except the fact that I enjoyed his particular plot the most.

Chip is the intellectual in the family, he lives alone and teaches in a college. He has a particular dislike for capitalist societies and the excessive commercializing in society nowadays. He is also working on a script for a play and owes his sister Denise a large amount of money which is something causing him great distress. I will not say anymore about him except to mention that it is the most unpredictable plot I have ever read.

Denise is a rising star chef working in the city. Her story is the juiciest story with lots of drama. Again, it was unpredictable and very satisfying how the character developed through the plot.

All these characters and plots are connected by Enid trying to get the whole family for one last christmas dinner in their home at St. Jude (their hometown and place where Enid and Alfred currently reside).

This book has been awarded the prestigious National Book Award, his acceptance speech is available on their website.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys well-written, original, immersive works of fiction.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections, 11 Jul 2009
By RachelWalker "RachelW" (England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
I can understand why people might not like this: it's depressing - seemingly determined to be so - partly because of the nearly relentless griping and arguing the characters get up to, and party because of the relentless negativity of many of the events in their lives. Not only that but a number of the characters aren't particularly likeable. And, if you think that might make you predisposed not to like this, consider, then, the fact that it is also *long*. Even more of a chore, perhaps. For some.

But not me. I revel in depressing, and I'm always happy to spend a lot of time in the company of a maddening yet sympathetic, and bottom line human, character. Even a whole family of them. And this is a remarkable family of them. They're almost infintely frustrating, in the relationships they have not just with each other but with the people around them. The arguments, the conflicts, the jealousies and rivalries, the remarkable stubbornness of every single one of them, is enough to make you tear your hair out. But, while you spend alternate time with each of them, you come to understand each one and feel intimately for each one also, and even if you don't quite think Gary or Alfred goes about things the right way, you have a boundless empathy for them.

The Corrections is familial, political, and social. It's an intricate and fractally complex portrait of a the entire life of one American nuclear family in a nuclear age, on the cusp of two centuries. It's big, and even though the characters may all at one point or another seem so sadly alone in the midst of the big picture, and are all stubborn and won't ever seem to give each other an inch, they make you feel inexplicably warm. They have normal but fractured and fractious family lives that most people strive their whole lives for. And that makes you think.

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3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars You will never get back the time you waste reading this junk...., 14 Jun 2009
By Richard Ely "Richard" (Derbyshire, UK) - See all my reviews
This preposterously over-hyped pile of American horse-dung was brought to you courtesy of Oprah Winfrey.

It's probably the worst novel I've ever had the misfortune to read: like rather a lot of his countrymen, Franzen seems to have a secret inferiority complex and he's determined to impress the reader with the width of his vocabulary and his clever-clever ability to patronise a bunch of worthless characters who weren't worth creating, never mind patronising. The plot, such as it is, takes a distant second place to the author's stylistic tricks, but it briefly concerns a disfunctional family, where parents don't understand children and vice versa. Sounds familiar? Yes, all too familiar: we've all been here before, too many times.

My advice to you would be to ignore this book and (probably) anything else written by the improbably self-satisfied Mr. Franzen. If we pay no attention to him, maybe he'll go away.
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