Rating: 
Summary: The emperor has no clothes.
Review: I am writing this online (lazy) so forgive the typos, poor grammar, spelling errors, etc.Reading "The Corrections" is like making love to an extremely obese woman whom I just met in a dark bar late at night, and to whom I would never introduce my friends. I feel dirty and ashamed, and I want out of here very badly. Okay, so I was drunk and horny, but that is no excuse for my behavior. As a novelist myself, I have no problem writing the inspired part of my story, which we can call the "meat". The problem I have is writing the "fat" needed to fill out the story to publishable volume. I admit that Jonathan Franzen is a "talented" writer. I admit I finished reading "The Corrections". But I feel, in having done so, like I had to gorge on a ton of fat to get to half a kilo of meat. "serious fiction"? Excuse me, I have to go force myself to vomit now.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent, especially for ex-Midwesterners
Review: This book is very gripping. I looked forward to reading it daily. The situations demonstrate Midwestern values and how the children of Midwesterns violate those norms while extricating themselves. The end actually caused me agony, reflecting on my own family and the forms that we do not live up to our parents value. Franzen truly captures the essence of Midwestern thought. Would have liked to have seen some more positivity, instead of the glib New York sensibilities that obviously overtaken the author. However, I would recommend this book to anyone, as long as they are from the Midwest. Great book.
Rating:
Summary: Dysfunction at its best
Review: When you look up "Dysfunctional" in the dictionary, you will, without a doubt, see a family photo of the Lamberts--the family at the heart of the story in THE CORRECTIONS. With one of the best portraits to ever come out of American literature of a screwed-up American family, THE CORRECTIONS could survive on this attribute alone. But other factors make it a worthy read and add to its overall success. Perfect? No. What is? Lengthy? You bet. Worth the effort? Absolutely. Like many, I was sickened by the excessive hype that this novel received and put off reading it until now. And it's probably because of this cooling off period that I was now able to enjoy it. I have to say, that if I had come across this book on my own, not knowing anything about the author or the book's "history" I would be running around screaming "genius." But because of the intensity this book was shoved down our collective throats, I was a little more reserved in my praise. Don't get me wrong, the writing is excellent and on the same level as other great reads out there like some of C.T. Boyle's works (WATER MUSIC) or something along the lines of McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD, but the PR people who did the number on us and Franzen should be put out to pasture, pronto. My suggestion: Try and come at this novel as if you'd just picked it up on a whim--you'll be pleasantly surprised if you do, for there are more than a few laugh-out-loud scenes and some stellar insight into the human condition. Poor Mr. Franzen. And my suggestion for him? Try using Donald Trump's famous words on whoever is doing your excessive PR.
Rating: 
Summary: The Corrections
Review: The Corrections is the over-hyped novel by Franzen, the man who famously rejected Oprah's request to include his book in her off-again on-again Book Club. At its most basic, this book is about a woman trying to get her family home together for Christmas while her husband falls apart. At its deepest, it is a look at the lives of middle-America, the failings, the hopes, the achievements, the sadness. Ultimately, it is about the corrections that everyone puts into place in their lives, but that can never truly be achieved. Enid Lambert wants to bring her family together for one last Christmas before her husband, Alfred, crumbles to pieces from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. The novel briefly touches on this in the beginning, then spends 400-odd pages examining and summarising the lives of each Lambert - From Gary, the no-nonsense, successful older brother, to Denise, the sexually uncertain, confused youngest daughter, to Chip, Alfred's favourite and the intellectual, who runs to Eastern Europe to solves his problems. We also experience the world through the eyes of Enid and Alfred at various points in time, learning just why and how everyone turned out the way they did. The way the Corrections is written is interesting, but hardly unique. In one section, we are 'made' to dislike another character, but of course by the time we have walked a hundred pages in their shoes, we now appreciate them also. This means that, by the time Christmas does come around, we understand the position of every family member, and nobody is a true 'bad guy'. Perhaps Chip received the least amount of treatment, but this may be because his 'story' is dealt with at the very start and the very end, so we never really get a chance to see him in the entirety of the others. By the time an emotional commitment to the novel has been made, Chip's part is over. So does the book live up to the hype? No. Could it? Not really. By declining Oprah's invitation, the book entered the minds of people who normally wouldn't care, thus it has more of a general awareness than any other book I can think of in recent memory. But it is a worthwhile book, and highly recommended. Watching Alfred's disintegration is unbearably sad, the second to last section is probably the saddest piece of writing I have read in a while. I was a little disappointed by the very last section, which served as a summarising, 'what are they up to now' exercise, but I don't really have all that much to complain about. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't live up to the hype
Review: That Franzen is a brilliant person and gifted author is not in doubt. What is lacking in this book, however, is a reigning in of some of the voluminous information he gives out. Much of the writing that has little to do with the main characters serves only to bog down the reader and make the reader skip or skim pages altogether. Do I really care about Robin's background so much as to read pages upon pages about it? No. A page or two would suffice. Did we really need an expose on Lithuania to understand the events in Chip's life? Not really. In it's central study of a family falling apart and then coming back together again, this book excells. But I fail to see why this book garnered so much hype and critical praise.
Rating:
Summary: read this book and waste your life...
Review: this is the first time i've ever reviewed anything on Amazon. the only reason i'm doing this is because i'm so frustrated after enduring 400 pages of this drivel and angry that so many reviewers would testify to this book being great. it seems almost a conspiracy to me that this book would garner such critical review. go read Russell Banks, Delillo or Kundera if you are looking for bleak brilliance.
Rating:
Summary: Depressingly true!
Review: I, as many of my generation (late 20s) could recognize myself in almost every dysfunctional character in the book (thankfully often to a lesser extent...). The Lamberts may be a little too freakish, but their neuroses hint to our own in most instances. Mr. Franzen's descriptions while somewhat overwrought often come alive from the pages. The story, as usual, is a mere pretext to present the characters, but in this case the pretext is enough. Any of the Lamberts could carry a whole novel on their own backs. As for the critics that say Mr. Franzen's book is loquacious, verbose and pompous, all I can say is: I am glad he is. It is great to read a book, 600 pages long, that keeps bringing new analogies, metaphors and the such at each description. All in all, a great read! The only thing that put me off a little was the frequent use of repeated words for emphasis: boring boring boring!
Rating:
Summary: An Underachiever
Review: This book has a great critical reputation and I've always enjoyed Franzen's essays in The New Yorker, so I was slightly disappointed with the novel. The story about a dysfunctional family coming together for one last Christmas is good foundation and there are several interesting characters in the book, but the style leaves a lot to be desired. Scenes hop around, the writing is disjointed and the narrative is often hard to follow. It seemed that Franzen was trying to be avant gard and hip, but the book loses a lot of its power because of this style. I would recommend reading it as a beach book, but it could have been much more and because it failed to live up to its promise I can't give it a great rating.
Rating:
Summary: The contemporary family
Review: Franzen applies several quotations by Schopenhauer to characterize the nature of Alfred Lambert, a man "at sea," aging, suffering dementia, husband of a single-purposed woman, the father of 3 troubled children. In reality, the quotations characterize all 5 family members.
"If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary, a sort of penal colony." Alfred is trapped in his world of dementia. Enid is physically trapped by the needs of the demented husband, but emotionally trapped by her denial and unfulfilled demands. Gary, Chip, and Denise are trapped by their self-indulgences, their inability to come to terms with their past and acknowledge their present conditions, and, finally, to grow up.
"No little part of the torment of existence is that Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us catch our breath but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip." Tormented: all! Gary badgered and ridiculed by his wife and children, and resenting his parents' condition. Chip a failure, fired from his teaching job, never wanting to contact his family. Denise a sexual waffler - in her own words: "a mess."
"Woman pays the debt of life not by what she does, but by what she suffers; by the pains of childbearing and care for the child, and by submission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion." With this attitude, they all suffer.
"The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other." They each seem to be eating at each other. Although, perhaps unknowingly, they each desire a harmonious end.
THE CORRECTIONS, indeed, is a tragicomedy. Franzen has an unusual ability to create scenes that are both tragic and laugh-out-loud funny. In the early stages of the family life, young Chip is kept at the dinner table for 5 hours because he refused to eat "a clear yellowish liquid similar to plasma or the matter in a blister...greens leaked something cupric...capillary action..." He simply pushes his food around despite the pleading, threatening and bellowing by Alfred. Later in life, the demented, diapered Alfred hallucinates and imagines that his "turd" is alive and literally attacking him. Both scenes evoke conflicting thoughts: childhood memories (our own or our children's) and, woefully, the possibility that Alfred's condition may one day be our own.
Franzen is deliberate and frank in talk about sex. No innuendos, no euphemisms. Crude words are used, but in the context of modern day characters, they are appropriate. Franzen captures the failures, the broken mechanism of family chains within two separate generations. Writing with such depth of understanding of both generations is an accomplishment belying the author's youth. He has dug deep into the problems of old age and infirmity. Alfred's or Enid's dilemma could be anyone's future. And Franzen understands the frustrations of youth as depicted in the roles of Gary, Chip and Denise.
A final quotation from Schopenhauer sums up the family: "Amongst the evils of a penal colony is the company of those imprisoned in it."
But what were "The Corrections"? Corrections of an unbalanced marriage, a discordant family? Correction seems to occur in Enid's mind - her attitude. The collapsed family relationships are corrected when Alfred is finally "put away." At least, in Enid's mind - free at last. Gary, Chip, and Denise too. Alfred is unknowing. All free at last. A tragedy told, thank goodness, with comic relief.
Rating:
Summary: Editing?
Review: This book could have used some more editing. In fact, huge chunks could have been cut that would not have had much effect on the character development or plot. This is a well written book, there is simply too much of it. I do beleive that good writing comes from the author's unique ability to put words together, and Franzen does have some skill in that department. I also believe that the details are what is important. Franzen is obviously also of this belief. However, there were passages of this book that made me throw my head back and say, why? I try to make it a point to read absolute quality (I failed here) if the book is over 300 pages. Which happens to be just about the number of pages that should be contained within the front and back cover of "The Corrections." The book is about a family. It is basically divided into sections that all describe who these individuals are through their daily activites and brief flashbacks. Each of them has a section, and the end is a Christmas reunion. Some of the passages (especially the one with the parents) seem like they are a first draft of the manuscript that should be cut in half. By the time you get to the daughter Denise's section, your stamina is has just about kicked the bucket. I gave the book 4 stars because that is where it sits in the overall field of literature, probably somewhere between the 80th and 90th percentile. But other than the point that I emphasize in this review, it is quality literature. Hemingway believed that the first fifty pages of your draft should be cut down to 5 pages. Franzen would not have even had to be that extreme to make this so much better. If it was half the size, it would have been so much more powerful.
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