Search - The Corrections

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."

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.