Freedom

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.