The Corrections
2 journalers for this copy...
Duplicate copy.
On the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list.
Amazon.co.uk Review:
Critically lauded and an Oprah Book Club choice, Jonathan Franzen's third novel The Corrections is already a huge success in the US, and it's none too difficult to see why. Whereas his earlier novels, The Twenty-Seventh City and StrongMotion could be seen as single-issue works (on inner city decay and abortion respectively), the long-awaited The Corrections is far more grandiose in its ambition and its scale.
Framed by matriarch Enid Lambert's attempts to gather her three grown children back home for Christmas, The Corrections examines their lives: Enid's husband Alfred, sinking into dementia, her sons banker Gary and writer Chip (now in Lithuania) and daughter Denise, a chef, busily re-evaluating her sexual identity.
With these characters, Franzen gives himself plenty of room to examine the foibles, fears, hopes, anxieties and neuroses of 21st-century American life and the mad Lithuanian subplot provides some real laughs. But most striking and surprising about The Corrections is its reassuring normality. Despite all its well-signposted dysfunction, this remains at heart a big sprawling family saga, with all the security that implies. The book closes with Enid noting "that current events in general were more muted or insipid nowadays than they'd been in her youth" during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now, "disasters of this magnitude no longer seemed to befall the United States". It's a line Franzen couldn't have written after 11 September, 2001--and, perhaps because of its now forgotten confidence, The Corrections is a book that readers will take to their hearts.
On the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list.
Amazon.co.uk Review:
Critically lauded and an Oprah Book Club choice, Jonathan Franzen's third novel The Corrections is already a huge success in the US, and it's none too difficult to see why. Whereas his earlier novels, The Twenty-Seventh City and StrongMotion could be seen as single-issue works (on inner city decay and abortion respectively), the long-awaited The Corrections is far more grandiose in its ambition and its scale.
Framed by matriarch Enid Lambert's attempts to gather her three grown children back home for Christmas, The Corrections examines their lives: Enid's husband Alfred, sinking into dementia, her sons banker Gary and writer Chip (now in Lithuania) and daughter Denise, a chef, busily re-evaluating her sexual identity.
With these characters, Franzen gives himself plenty of room to examine the foibles, fears, hopes, anxieties and neuroses of 21st-century American life and the mad Lithuanian subplot provides some real laughs. But most striking and surprising about The Corrections is its reassuring normality. Despite all its well-signposted dysfunction, this remains at heart a big sprawling family saga, with all the security that implies. The book closes with Enid noting "that current events in general were more muted or insipid nowadays than they'd been in her youth" during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Now, "disasters of this magnitude no longer seemed to befall the United States". It's a line Franzen couldn't have written after 11 September, 2001--and, perhaps because of its now forgotten confidence, The Corrections is a book that readers will take to their hearts.
Journal Entry 2 by 
crimson-tide
at Balingup, Western Australia Australia on Monday, November 12, 2012
crimson-tide at Balingup, Western Australia Australia on Monday, November 12, 2012
Placed into the OZ VBB yesterday, and chosen already by KLL... :-)
Journal Entry 3 by crimson-tide at Balingup, Western Australia Australia on Monday, November 12, 2012
crimson-tide at Balingup, Western Australia Australia on Monday, November 12, 2012
Released 11 yrs ago (11/13/2012 UTC) at Balingup, Western Australia Australia
CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:
Off to Perth as KLL's choice from Round 33 of the OZ VBB.
Happy reading!
Happy reading!
Thanks to crimson-tide for posting so quickly - it's a hefty book!!
Journal Entry 5 by KLL at Victoria Park Markets, John McMillan Park in Victoria Park, Western Australia Australia on Thursday, December 14, 2017
Released 6 yrs ago (12/15/2017 UTC) at Victoria Park Markets, John McMillan Park in Victoria Park, Western Australia Australia
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Taking to the 'Buy Nothing' stall at the TGIF Markets on Friday evening, to hopefully swap with some locals! (and maybe recruit some new Bookcrossers!)
So many books I have not journalled! I finally read this a few months ago and rather enjoyed it. It's a big sprawling story of a fairly mediocre family. I liked how the idea of 'Corrections' kept coming up in the story - economic corrections, political corrections, and personal ones too.
