a book
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen · 2001 · 576 pages
#1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER
“A spellbinding novel” (People) from the New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections is a comic, tragic epic of worlds colliding: an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions, a new world 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 Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives.
The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself that, despite certain alarming indicators, he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man—or so her mother fears.
Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
recommended by 3 people
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Colin Firth
“Franzen captures how trivializing a family battle can be and how it can seem to be a fight for survival when, in fact, you’re simply scoring points. Chip represents so much of what I’m familiar with: highly intelligent, educated people who become fractured and cast adrift. You can liberate yourself from the rules, decide you don’t want to be on the treadmill, you’re not going to be Joe Schmo—but once you’ve cut loose from all that, you can be quite lost. Franzen shows how often love between these people is impossible—how hard love is, how it isn’t cozy—how problems aren’t something you can break down by everybody hugging one another and forgiving and making it okay. It just blows up in all their faces.”↗
