Freedom

This book is EPIC. You get quite a few VERY different points of view, and you follow them through decades of tumultuous time. Despite its grand scale though, I found this novel incredibly intimate at times. I think about this book a lot, and Franzen's characters have changed the way I encounter the world.

passei metade a odiar, metade a adorar, metade sem perceber, mas este homem apanha-me sempre de alguma forma

Franzen is a boss. It's always nice for me to find litfic family sagas which function as page-turners. Not PERFECT, but pretty dang close for me.

Wow. It will be difficult for me to summarize here 550+ dense pages, but I will try. This is a powerhouse of a novel, an engrossing and highly-nuanced narrative of the intricacies of marriage and parenthood, traditional American values held in the light of increasingly polarized politics, and the paradoxically complicated nature of what it actually means to be free.

The story follows a perfectly midwestern couple, Walter and Patty Berglund, and their perfectly nuclear family, who at the start seem cliche in their normalcy and unflappable kindness. But slowly, as their children become teenagers, Patty begins to crack, and then the family cracks, which then sets off a permanent and increasingly damaging rift that grows into all kinds of scandal.

Franzen does a remarkably thorough job of harping on freedom, and what characters will do to try to find it; Walter seeks freedom from his childhood, and from the ills of an environmentally-imploding society; Patty seeks freedom from her marriage with Walter, and from the pervasive regrets of having not hitched the rockstar; Joey wants to be free of his too-committed high school girlfriend; etc, etc, while in the background is 9/11 and then the ensuing war for freedom in Iraq. And so it seems that all journeys for freedom end up messy, painful, and even if freedom is found, it is vacuous and unfulfilling. Walter's older brother Mitch is the prime example of this, and perhaps even Richard Katz.

I may need to think more on the takeaways, thematically, but I will say that Franzen's clever structure and knack for detailed, long-haul character development is captivating from the start. The dialog is delightful and the overall story a little absurd but still firmly enough in contact with reality to be uniquely charming. This book is a commitment, but if you've liked other Franzen novels, or David Foster-Wallace, or the like – then I definitely recommend picking this one up.

All the characters in this novel called Freedom are driven by compulsions. Compulsion is the central problem, and the characters have varying degrees of success in recognizing and dealing with their compulsions. In the process, you the reader have to accompany them through some painfully terrible decisions. What makes this an enjoyable way to spend your time is really good storytelling. Patty and Walter Berglund and their friend Richard Katz are likable people, recognizable in their human failings. The Berglunds' son Joey is so unlikable that you want to know what he's going to do next. Franzen makes a gripping story out of these people's struggle to find meaning for themselves and preserve their relationships. You might even say Freedom is compulsively readable.

O carte mare, la propriu și la figurat, centrată pe trei personaje principale: soțul este un model de seriozitate, maturitate, chibzuință, moderație, corectitudine, pe când prietenul său cel mai bun este un rocker rebel, o fire neliniștită și libertină. Femeia se îndrăgostește inițial de rocker care însă nu profită de ea pentru că prietenul lui o place pe tânără și îi lasă să se căsătorească. Povestea prezintă viața acestui trio încă de când erau copii, apoi relația amoroasă dintre ei, căsătoria, mutarea în casa nouă, vecinii, copiii, serviciul, apoi relația extraconjugală a soției cu rockerul, refugiul soțului în muncă, secretara cea tânara care apare. Aparent este o poveste comună, dar e scrisă cu atâta sevă, cu atâta forță, încât trebuie citită. În paralel cartea este și analiza societății americane contemporane. Franzen este unul din cei mai mari scriitori americani contemporani.

It started out great but kind of collapsed under itself in the last quarter.

I really hate the star system for these kinds of books.

I'm not sure how to review this book. It's not the great American novel, but I see the potential. Franzen is no slouch but the novel suffered from too much observation (if astute) and not enough edge. It's like Franzen can recognize the issues but is to close to comment on them effectively (usefully?). I recognized myself and my generation but was neither affirmed (not a bad thing) or challenged.

Well, here's the thing: I like Jonathan Franzen most of the time. And I certainly zipped through Freedom. I can't, however, help harboring the sneaking suspicion that he is just a little bit sexist. Certainly not misogynistic, nor a male chauvinist, but just a wee bit biased towards his male characters. I'm sure someone could offer a compelling argument about how Patty Berglund's character in this novel is not only central to the plot, but a detailed and sympathetic portrait of a troubled woman. Alright, fine fine. But she's the sole central female character flanked by three central male characters, and two women who certainly could have had their stories woven into the plot more intricately seem simply flat against the more in-depth psychologies of the other four. Franzen spends a lot of time on how Patty was the forgotten child of her family of origin, and then, ironically (and, I believe, unintentionally), allows Patty's daughter, Jessica (written to be an eerie match for her mother on several dimensions) to become the forgotten child of the Berglund family.

All that is not to say that I didn't like the book. I did. And Franzen can clearly write about whatever he wants to write about, and plenty of people will (probably justifiably) adore it. I'm just saying (admittedly, quite possibly as a result of the blossoming of my inner feminist curmudgeon) that I would have liked it more had I not finished with the sense that Franzen is an eminently capable and entertaining writer, but, also, a dude.

At about 1/10th of the way in I'm still not 100% committed to it... I get enough gossip and drama without having to read about it too, but we'll see how it goes.

... A little better than half way through and...

It's too much for me. There is just so much gratuitous in this book. I don't get it. I'm embarrassed to have read this far and have no desire to go further.

I loved this at first, and then it fizzled.

Perfect.

The Corrections was a bleak novel about unhappy, unlikable people. So is Freedom. I was not in the mood for Freedom; I didn't think I was going to like it and I didn't. That doesn't mean it is not a good novel, possibly even a great novel. I just was not in the mood for a huge book filled with disfunctional people.*

Franzen tends to spend the first 200-300 pages making you hate every one of his characters, only to finally make you then care enough about them to finish the damn thing. he is a fantastic writer, but i would not describe his books as enjoyable to read. his characters make you hate parts of yourself you generally don't acknowledge you have.

Everyone seems to have a lot to say about Freedom. Love it. Hate it. I, however, do not have much to say. It was okay. There were sections I loved (Patty's “Autobiography”; Katz' interview) and parts I hated (anything focusing on Joey, aka the next Holden Caulfield; the Berglund family history).

The story is compelling at times, but is missing the bigger marks it seems to be striving for–i.e. scathing social commentary, epic narrative, grand witticism, and so forth. The characters are wonderfully drawn and their richness provides one argument for why to read this novel.

The most important advice I can offer regarding Freedom is to ignore the hype. It may be the best book you've ever read, it may be the worst. Or it may just fall in the middle somewhere. For the time being, you still have the freedom to make that choice yourself.

This book would have earned five stars, but the end felt entirely disconnected from the rest of the book. It was inauthentic, and felt like it was designed to appeal to a movie going audience.

The rest of the book is brilliant, though I found the entire mountain top renewal section to be superfluous. It felt like it was crammed into the book so Franzen could expound upon his environmental issues; in particular, his devotion to songbird ecology. Personally, I'm a lover of birds, and especially songbirds, but even I found no value in the constant discussion of feral and outdoor cats, the populations decimated by our technology, and the destruction of habitats. This is a book about family, and when he sticks to that, Franzen delivers a virtuoso performance.

Slight Spoiler Below This Point.

In the end, this book is weaker than The Corrections, which felt like a perfect novel about family. One of the themes that Franzen seems to be exploring on a consistent basis is the idea of the prodigal son, and I found the prodigal son of The Corrections (Chip) much more enthralling than Freedom's Joey. Joey and Walter's reconciliation felt forced (though, in all honesty, reconciliation can often feel that way.) Reconciliation, agreeability, and of course, freedom(more precisely, the excess of freedom), are the resounding themes of this book. The book mostly succeeds in exploring all of them in a fascinating and authentic way.

But man, I hate the ending.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I didn't make it even a quarter of the way through this novel. (The only reason I rate it 2 stars instead of 1 is out of the guilt I feel for giving the lowest rating to a book I didn't finish.) I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I cannot suffer Franzen's prose. He's supposed to be one of the titans of modern American lit, and I have to struggle to keep myself from falling asleep after just one or two of his pages. I didn't like what I read of the novel–it was dull, cranky, and filled with too much depiction of the sort of suburban malaise that I find so incredibly cliched–but what I don't like even more is the fact that I can't even keep engaged in reading one of the most important authors of my time.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I didn't make it even a quarter of the way through this novel. (The only reason I rate it 2 stars instead of 1 is out of the guilt I feel for giving the lowest rating to a book I didn't finish.) I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I cannot suffer Franzen's prose. He's supposed to be one of the titans of modern American lit, and I have to struggle to keep myself from falling asleep after just one or two of his pages. I didn't like what I read of the novel–it was dull, cranky, and filled with too much depiction of the sort of suburban malaise that I find so incredibly cliched–but what I don't like even more is the fact that I can't even keep engaged in reading one of the most important authors of my time.