Did not like this book. Honestly could not get past page 25 and had to stop. Still canot understand what the hype was about this best seller.

I have to connect to the characters when I read a book. I could not feel for anyone in the story and instead focused on the writing style. I don't enjoy that so I put it down.

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!

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When I perused the reviews of "The Corrections", it is hard to believe that I have read the same text!! I believe that after reading you will either LOVE or HATE this book... nothing in between. I could not put this book down. Jonathan Franzen explores, in a hilarious way, the impact of ones upbringing in a dysfunctional family. The members of the Lambert family are certainly damaged and sad, however, the stories message is ultimately one of understanding and forgiveness. I strongly suggest that you read the book and form your own opinion.

Amazon.com Review
Jonathan Franzen's exhilarating novel The Corrections tells a spellbinding story with sexy comic brio, and evokes a quirky family akin to Anne Tyler's, only bitter. Franzen's great at describing Christmas homecomings gone awry, cruise-ship follies, self-deluded academics, breast-obsessed screenwriters, stodgy old farts and edgy Tribeca bohemians equally at sea in their lives, and the mad, bad, dangerous worlds of the Internet boom and the fissioning post-Soviet East.
All five members of the Lambert family get their due, as everybody's lives swirl out of control. Paterfamilias Alfred is slipping into dementia, even as one of his inventions inspires a pharmaceutical giant to revolutionize treatment of his disease. His stubborn wife, Enid, specializes in denial; so do their kids, each in an idiosyncratic way. Their hepcat son, Chip, lost a college sinecure by seducing a student, and his new career as a screenwriter is in peril. Chip's sister, Denise, is a chic chef perpetually in hot water, romantically speaking; banker brother Gary wonders if his stifling marriage is driving him nuts. We inhabit these troubled minds in turn, sinking into sorrow punctuated by laughter, reveling in Franzen's satirical eye:

Gary in recent years had observed, with plate tectonically cumulative anxiety, that population was continuing to flow out of the Midwest and toward the cooler coasts.... Gary wished that all further migration [could] be banned and all Midwesterners encouraged to revert to eating pasty foods and wearing dowdy clothes and playing board games, in order that a strategic national reserve of cluelessness might be maintained, a wilderness of taste which would enable people of privilege, like himself, to feel extremely civilized in perpetuity.
Franzen is funny and on the money. This book puts him on the literary map. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
If some authors are masters of suspense, others postmodern verbal acrobats, and still others complex-character pointillists, few excel in all three arenas. In his long-awaited third novel, Franzen does. Unlike his previous works, The 27th City (1988) and Strong Motion (1992), which tackled St. Louis and Boston, respectively, this one skips from city to city (New York; St. Jude; Philadelphia; Vilnius, Lithuania) as it follows the delamination of the Lambert family Alfred, once a rigid disciplinarian, flounders against Parkinson's-induced dementia; Enid, his loyal and embittered wife, lusts for the perfect Midwestern Christmas; Denise, their daughter, launches the hippest restaurant in Philly; and Gary, their oldest son, grapples with depression, while Chip, his brother, attempts to shore his eroding self-confidence by joining forces with a self-mocking, Eastern-Bloc politician. As in his other novels, Franzen blends these personal dramas with expert technical cartwheels and savage commentary on larger social issues, such as the imbecility of laissez-faire parenting and the farcical nature of U.S.-Third World relations. The result is a book made of equal parts fury and humor, one that takes a dry-eyed look at our culture, at our pains and insecurities, while offering hope that, occasionally at least, we can reach some kind of understanding. This is, simply, a masterpiece. Agent, Susan Golomb. (Sept.)Forecast: Franzen has always been a writer's writer and his previous novels have earned critical admiration, but his sales haven't yet reached the level of, say, Don DeLillo at his hottest. Still, if the ancillary rights sales and the buzz at BEA are any indication, The Corrections should be his breakout book. Its varied subject matter will endear it to a genre-crossing section of fans

With all the awards this book has won, I don't have to tell you it is a well written novel. I will tell you it is a great story. An entertaining tale of a middle aged woman, Enid, who lives in the Midwest. Enid brings her family together for one more Christmas before her aging husband, Alfred, succumbs to Parkinson's disease. Poor Alfred is loosing his mind, son Chip is a wanna be screen writer/punk, daughter Denise is trying to recover from a failed marriage, and son Gary is the corporate stooge with a dysfunctional family. This is a story about everyone's family. Everything that is wrong in American and everything that is right. This is a funny, satirical look at us!

Awful....terribly overrated.

A good very detailed read. Family at it's most real.

Winner of the National Book Award and a National Bestseller. A comic, tragic epic stretching from the Midwest to Wall Street to Eastern Europe. After almost fifty years of motherhood, Enid is ready to have some fun. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on bringing her wayward family together for one last Christmas at home.

"Dinner of Revenge" (starting on page 251) is one of my favorite scenes in any book, ever. Vivid and painfully funny. Loved this book.

A comic, tragic epic stretching from the Midwest of the 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 witht he era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed.

After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parksinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family next to the catastrophes of their own lives. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on bringing the family together for one las Christmas at home.

A mother wants to bring her adult children home for one last Christmas. Her husband is losing his battle with Parkinson's disease and their children have lives of their own. It makes for interesting reading.

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