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The Corrections Paperback – 2 July 2007
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THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
‘A genuine masterpiece, the first great American novel of the twenty-first century’ Elle
‘Funny, moving, generous, brutal and intelligent’ Guardian
A brilliantly perceptive and moving novel that announced Jonathan Franzen as one of our greatest living writers.
The Lamberts – Enid, Alfred and their three grown-up children – are a troubled family living in a troubled age. After fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun, but her husband Alfred is losing his mind to Parkinson’s. As his condition worsens, and the Lamberts are forced to face the long-buried secrets and failures that haunt them, Enid sets her heart on gathering everyone together for one last family Christmas.
‘Compellingly readable, funny and above all generous spirited’ Daily Mail
‘A novel of outstanding sympathy, wit, moral intelligence and pathos, a family saga told with stylistic brio and psychological and political insight’ Financial Times
‘A big-hearted, panoramic American epic, intelligent and wise but also wildly, stonkingly funny’ Independent
Jonathan Franzen's book 'Crossroads' was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 04-10-2021.
- ISBN-109780007232444
- ISBN-13978-0007232444
- Edition1st
- PublisherFourth Estate
- Publication date2 July 2007
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions12.8 x 4.2 x 19.8 cm
- Print length672 pages
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‘Jonathan Franzen has built a powerful novel out of the swarming consciousness of a marriage, a family, a whole culture’ Don DeLillo
'Impossible to dislike, an unpretentious page-turner' Zadie Smith
'Compelling. A pleasure from beginning to end. Franzen, in one leap, has put himself into the league of Updike and Roth' Evening Standard
‘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' Guardian
‘Intelligent, compellingly readable, funny and above all generous spirited, it is a rare thing, a modern novel with both head and heart’ Daily Mail
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Jonathan Franzen’s work includes four novels (The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom), two collections of essays (Farther Away, How To Be Alone), a memoir (The Discomfort Zone), and, most recently, The Kraus Project. He is recognised as one of the best American writers of our age and has won many awards. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.
Product details
- ASIN : 0007232446
- Publisher : Fourth Estate; 1st edition (2 July 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 672 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780007232444
- ISBN-13 : 978-0007232444
- Dimensions : 12.8 x 4.2 x 19.8 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 26,391 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 121 in Self-Help & Psychology Humour
- 165 in Medical Fiction (Books)
- 216 in Doctors & Medicine Humour
- Customer reviews:
About the author

Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels--Purity, Freedom, The Corrections, The Twenty-Seventh City, and Strong Motion--and five works of nonfiction and translation, including Farther Away, How to Be Alone, and The Discomfort Zone, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the German Akademie der Kunste, and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
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This is usually fascinating stuff, but could easily have been cut down by around 200 pages, and still maintained the central narrative and the most compelling side plots.
Franzen is clearly more than a competent writer as the characterisation in the novel proves. The protagonists are so human, so complicated, so believable and nuanced. Their faults are easily recognisable whether they reflect my own weaknesses (such as Gary's judgmental nature betraying genuine concern) or those of people I know. What's more, the interaction between the characters, the way consequences play themselves out over time and the overreaching damage caused by misunderstanding, skewered values and the like reveals the deep understanding the author has of the complexity of relationships. This could have been a first class novel. Instead it's weighed down by the author's self-indulgent verbosity. It's length is not a problem in principle but becomes one when you realise how much of it is unnecessary. Franzen is so busy trying to show off his intellect or the amples of research he's done that he employs no filter whatsoever for this information, dumping in-depth regurgitations about the stock market, railroads and Post-Soviet politics wholesale on the reader. Sadly, said information serves no additional purpose to the book than to distract or bore the reader and I soon learned to skip them. If Franzen knew what he was doing - or rather cared to be a bit more economical with his words, these impartations might have been put to better use. There are rare occasions he does get the right balance between relevant research and overkill, the character Denise for instance, who is a chef and for whom Franzen conjures up vivid images of her culinary delights.
As has been pointed out none of the characters are particularly likeable. However I did find myself sympathising with Enid the matriarch the most. Despite all her pretentiousness and snobbery she cuts a tragic figure being married to Alfred, a racist, anachronistic and emotionally sterile man. Gary their eldest son is a sanctimonious materialist married to spiteful and manipulative Caroline. Like his father he's a man of warped principle but has a very cold and didactic way of expressing solicitude for those he loves. Despite his best efforts he's more like his father than he wishes to be. Chip the middle child is an overgrown teenager; shallow despite his intellect, self-absorbed and ill-suited to life; escaping responsibility whenever and however he can. Denise is the slightly indulged only daughter who after years of contempt for her mother finally finds it in her heart to see things from her perspective. Like them or loathe them, you feel you know these people inside and out by the end of the novel. Unfortunately Franzen takes so long to get to the point you're sick to the back teeth of them by this point. This need not have happened if the novelist didn't waste so much time on non-essentials. As is often the case when writers take their time to get to a resolution, the ending is a bit of an anti-climax and seems a bit rushed in an effort to wrap things up fairly tidily. More's the pity then that the author misses opportunities to explore aspects of the story that would have been more helpful; for example how the relationship between the two brothers disintegrated.
Another drawback is Franzen's prurience - as if he's a horny adolescent just recently discovering sex. He finds all kinds of ways to work sensationalised sex scenes into 'The Corrections', whether it's useful or not. He at times opts for a detached, clinical approach describing a pornographic scene like it's something you'd read in a text book-more of a party trick than anything else, another one of Franzen's skills that could have been put to better use. I couldn't help thinking his prolonged accounts of Denise's move from straight, to bisexual to outright lesbian were just an excuse to humour some deep-seated fantasies of his. The result is an unwelcome veneer of seediness to 'The Corrections' which was entirely avoidable. There was some unwelcome stereotyping of African-Americans too, come to think of it.
It's a credit to Franzen that with all these flaws I still managed to make it to the end of the book and to recognise he is without a doubt a very capable writer. He just doesn't do himself many favours in 'The Corrections'. In the end, it's not as great a read as he so easily could have made it.








