The Corrections [Paperback]

Critically lauded and an Oprah Book Club choice, Jonathan Franzen's third novel The Corrections is already a huge success in the US, and it's none too difficult to see why. Whereas his earlier novels, The Twenty-Seventh City and StrongMotion could be seen as single-issue works (on inner city decay and abortion respectively), the long-awaited The Corrections is far more grandiose in its ambition and its scale.

Framed by matriarch Enid Lambert's attempts to gather her three grown children back home for Christmas, The Corrections examines their lives: Enid's husband Alfred, sinking into dementia, her sons banker Gary and writer Chip (now in Lithuania) and daughter Denise, a chef, busily re-evaluating her sexual identity.

With these characters, Franzen gives himself plenty of room to examine the foibles, fears, hopes, anxieties and neuroses of 21st-century American life and the mad Lithuanian subplot provides some real laughs. But most striking and surprising about The Corrections is its reassuring normality. Despite all its well-signposted dysfunction, this remains at heart a big sprawling family saga, with all the security that implies. The book closes with Enid noting "that current events in general were more muted or insipid nowadays than they'd been in her youth" during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now, "disasters of this magnitude no longer seemed to befall the United States". It's a line Franzen couldn't have written after 11 September, 2001--and, perhaps because of its now forgotten confidence, The Corrections is a book that readers will take to their hearts.--Alan Stewart --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

‘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 & Roth. That's why there is so much excitement about it.' 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 Books 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 TELGRAPH Books of the Year

'With its finely variegated characters and strong emotional undertow, Franzen's sublime domestic saga... is a must.'

'A work of staggering energy.'

'So funny, so intelligent, so moving, so full of shrewd observation, that not a moment you spend reading is wasted.'

One of Esquire's 'Books of 2002'
' The closest anyone has come to "The Great American Novel" in a long time.'

'Jonathan Franzen is the master of dysfunction. He's more miserable than I am and funnier too.'

'A remarkably energetic novel, by turns funny, caustic, upsetting and dramatic.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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 announces Jonathan Franzen as one of the most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.

The cover design is a limited edition print (1 of 2000) by Michael Landy.
Michael Landy, of the so-called Young British Artists, is best known for his performance piece cum installation, Breakdown, in which he destroyed all of his possessions.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

'The Corrections' is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century – a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes.

After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is 'not' clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man – or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal; bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.

Stretching from the Midwest at 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 with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and globalized greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it announces Jonathan Franzen as one of the most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Jonathan Franzen was born in 1959 and graduated from Swarthmore College. He has lived in Boston, Spain, New York, Colorado Springs and Philadelphia. His previous novels are The Twenty-Seventh City (1988) and Strong Motion (1992). How to be Alone, a collection of Franzen’s non fiction will be published in October 2002.

T H E M A D N E S S of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You
could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in
the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees
restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things
coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened
on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks
rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered
in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer,
the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a
paper bag, the smell of the gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had
cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love
seat.
Three in the afternoon was a time of danger in these gerontocratic
suburbs of St. Jude. Alfred had awakened in the great blue chair in
which he’d been sleeping since lunch. He’d had his nap and there would
be no local news until five o’clock. Two empty hours were a sinus in
which infections bred. He struggled to his feet and stood by the Ping-
Pong table, listening in vain for Enid.
Ringing throughout the house was an alarm bell that no one but Al-
fred and Enid could hear directly. It was the alarm bell of anxiety. It was
like one of those big cast-iron dishes with an electric clapper that send
schoolchildren into the street in fire drills. By now it had been ringing
for so many hours that the Lamberts no longer heard the message of
“bell ringing” but, as with any sound that continues for so long that you have the leisure to learn its component sounds (as with any word you
stare at until it resolves itself into a string of dead letters), instead heard a clapper rapidly striking a metallic resonator, not a pure tone but a
granular sequence of percussions with a keening overlay of overtones;
ringing for so many days that it simply blended into the background ex-
cept at certain early-morning hours when one or other of them awoke in a sweat and realized that a bell had been ringing in their heads for as long as they could remember; ringing for so many months that
the sound had given way to a kind of metasound whose rise and fall was
not the beating of compression waves but the much, much slower wax-
ing and waning of their consciousness of the sound. Which consciousness
was particularly acute when the weather itself was in an anxious mood.
Then Enid and Alfred, she on her knees in the dining room opening
drawers, he in the basement surveying the disastrous Ping-Pong table —
each felt near to exploding with anxiety.
The anxiety of coupons, in a drawer containing candles in designer
autumn colors. The coupons were bundled in a rubber band, and Enid
was realizing that their expiration dates (often jauntily circled in red by
the manufacturer)lay months and even years in the past: that these
hundred-odd coupons, whose total face value exceeded sixty dollars
(potentially one hundred twenty dollars at the Chiltsville supermarket
that doubled coupons), had all gone bad. Tilex, sixty cents off. Excedrin
PM, a dollar off. The dates were not even close . The dates were histori-
cal . The alarm bell had been ringing for years .
She pushed the coupons back in among the candles and shut the
drawer. She was looking for a letter that had come by Registered mail
some days ago. Alfred had heard the mailman knock on the door and
had shouted, “Enid! Enid!” so loudly that he couldn’t hear her shouting
back, “Al, I’m getting it!” He’d continued to shout her name, coming
closer and closer, and because the sender of the letter was the Axon
Corporation, 24 East Industrial Serpentine, Schwenksville, PA, and be-
cause there were aspects of the Axon situation that Enid knew about
and hoped that Alfred didn’t, she ‘d quickly stashed the letter some-
where within . Fifteen feet of the front door. Alfred had emerged from
the basement bellowing like a piece of earth-moving equipment,
“There ’s somebody at the door!”and she’d fairly screamed, “the mailman!
The mailman!” and he’d shaken his head at the complexity of it all.
Enid felt sure that her own head would clear if only she didn’t have
to wonder, every five minutes, what Alfred was up to. But, try as she
might, she couldn’t get him interested in life. When she encouraged
him to take up his metallurgy again, he looked at her as if she’d lost her
mind. When she asked whether there wasn’t some yard work he could
do, he said his legs hurt. When she reminded him that the husbands of
her friends all had hobbies (Dave Schumpert his stained glass, Kirby
Root his intricate chalets for nesting purple finches, Chuck Meisner his
hourly monitoring of his investment portfolio), Alfred acted as if she
were trying to distract him from some great labor of his. And what was
that labor? Repainting the porch furniture? He’d been repainting the
love seat since Labor Day. She seemed to recall that the last time he’d
painted the furniture he’d done the love seat in two hours. Now he
went to his workshop morning after morning, and after a month she
ventured in to see how he was doing and found that all he’d painted of
the love seat was the legs. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.