Rating: 
Summary: Ugh, will I EVER get through this book ... ?
Review: I bought this book last autumn (full price at a big-box store), and despite not finishing it I think I'm going to sell it online here. I tried and tried, but couldn't get into the characters or the plotline (was there one?!). The main character and his siblings and parents seem to take turns exposing their problems, with no signs that there will be any resolution/enlightenment, etc. Maybe I think the author was a arrogant snob when he rejected Oprah's "Book of the Month" endorsement, but for me, this is the most boring tedious book I've read (tried reading) in a LONG time. Hang up your hat Jonathan Frantzen.
Rating: 
Summary: Really Excellent
Review: The Corrections is about a family with three grown children whose mother begs them all to come home for one last Christmas, before their increasingly demented father is checks out altogether. While the premise of emotional twisting and turning within families, especially families dealing with an aging/demented parent, is interesting enough it is really the characters that shine through. Each character in this drama is fully crafted, given their own lives/problems/personalities, and is felt with incredible authenticity. We begin with Alfred, the somewhat demented patriarch suffering with parkinson's disease. He's a stern, bitter, retired engineer who suffers delusions of [things] crawling up the walls. Even in his demented state, though, he inspires fear in his adult children. Alfred would seem an easy enough character to dislike, but don't count him out. We glimpse a hidden side of him near the end of the book when his grown daughter learns that he left his job to protect her honor, without ever telling her, so that he could spare her shame. Enid is the family matriarch, living within an unsatisfying marriage for over fifty years. Now Enid finds herself confronted with an increasingly needy husband and all the problems that are attendant. All Enid wants in the world is one last Christmas with her family at home, which just happens to be the thing that her family wants least in the world. Gary, the oldest son, is perhaps depressed and certainly drinking too much. Perhaps it's because of his stifling marriage to a woman who has little desire to be an adult herself, perhaps not. Gary subscribes to a strict philosophy of materialism and persues this to it's logical conclusion. Chip, the next Lambert child in line, has had a terrible time with adulthood. He believes that the consumer society is to blame for many of the world's evils. Unfortunately, he loses his chance at tenure because his morals don't extend to keeping his hands off of his students. Denise, the youngest and only female Lambert child, is a divorced star chef who is having serious sexual identity issues. Her relationships take her on a wild ride, which culminate with being caught by her girlfriend, with her girlfriend's husband. And oh, her girlfriend's husband is also her boss and didn't know that Denise had been sleeping with his wife. The Corrections is a very well written story that was just a pleasure to read. There are dark moments that will make you cry. There are moments that will make you dread the day that you have to deal with your aging parents. There is also some truly hysterical moments that will crack you up. Mostly, though, you will identitfy with the stupid things that we all do sometimes, despite knowing better.
Rating: 
Summary: Not 'The Great American Novel', But Great Nonetheless
Review: Set in St. Jude, a fictional city in, I think, Ohio, but really more of a Midwestern Everycity, "The Corrections" is the story of the Lambert family. Father Alfred is slowly fading away, due to the onset of Parkinson's Disease. Mother Enid wants her family, which also consists of her grown children Gary, Chip, and Denise, to spend one last Christmas in their childhood home. These are highly intelligent but emotionally scarred people. These are the Royal Tenenbaums, these are Salinger's Glass family. As Enid's attempt at a reunion are consistently rebuffed, author Jonathan Franzen presents the reader with a portrait, a dramatic tableau, of each member of the Lambert family, the better to understand why they wouldn't want to come home for Christmas, but probably should anyway. The book is divided up into long chapters, each focusing on one member of the Lambert family. It would seem to be a simple structure, one that even the most pedestrian reader could follow. But this belies the complexity within each chapter. Time, in Franzen's hands, is dynamic, as he jumps liberally back into each character's past, then slowly forward to the present. He does this with skill and precision, but also without fanfare. Careful attention must be paid, else a lazy reader will get lost. This technique allows Franzen to slowly build up the fabric of the Lambert family, as the reader sees patterns emerge within the lives of each character. It also helps that Franzen allows you inside the characters' heads, to see the world through their eyes, giving their internal dialogues a chance to be heard. What you see and hear, however, is not always pretty. Often times, these people -- like, I suspect, most of us -- are quite ugly in their private moments. You'll see how Alfred's dementia makes his life a confusing place, how oldest son Gary's depression creates in his home life an oppressive hell, how middle child Chip's obsessions and fantasies and masturbatory perversions do their best to ruin his promising teaching career, and how youngest child Denise's own confusion and anger conspire to ruin every relationship she has. Each character's thoughts, as they would themselves think them, are laid bold on the page. It's an intriguing and credible rhetorical technique that Franzen's skill as a writer pulls off perfectly. Franzen lets his technique show far too often. Writing that strives to tear apart the seams of literary convention often times bores me. I prefer it when a writer just comes up with a stronger stitch. Franzen toes the line between these two tendencies. When writing about Gary and his family, for example, Franzen uses an inordinate amount of exclamation points. Usually this would indicate a flaw in the author, that his limp prose must rely on punctuation to convey meaning. But Franzen, in full control of his prose and willing to show his skill at every turn, uses it to indicate something about character: that Gary and family, outwardly successful, are empty and dysfunctional on the inside. It's a less than subtle technique, though. At least the other characters wear their dysfunction under their sleeves; Gary's is right there in the punctuation. Less effective still is Franzen's use of that suddenly-tired modern literary convention, the e-mail conversation. Chip and Denise's dialogue would have been traded through lengthy, handwritten letters, doing yeomen's work marking the passage of time, if this novel had been written but ten years ago. Now, they just exchange half-formed thoughts, inside jokes, and not much content. Maybe that's the point (not maybe; I'd gather that is exactly the point), but it made for unenlightened reading. Neal Stephenson, in his long crypto-tome "Cryptonomicon", is the only writer I've encountered so far who has been able to effectively update this technique for the modern age. More effective, however, is the way Franzen recasts familiar situations to suit the inner thoughts of the character they are happening too. Alfred's battle with overwhelming incontinence is told as if he were planning the safety inspection of a railroad (one of his duties before he retired). Denise's sexual technique is recounted as if it were a recipe for a particularly complicated dish (she's a cook by trade). These, and others just like them, are wonderful extended passages, where Franzen ably relates the inner and outer lives of these characters, allowing them to intertwine into one level of existence. The inner lives of his characters are further complicated by his use of an omniscient and often times judgmental third person narrator. This technique is usually reserved for objective storytelling, presenting the facts as they lay. But Franzen's authorial voice has an intelligence and awareness all its own. Witness this little bit about Enid: "'There's bacon, you like bacon,' Enid sang. This was a cynical, expedient fraud, one of her hundred daily conscious failures as a mother." These are the narrator's words ("a cynical, expedient fraud"), not any one character's. Never afraid to take a stand, Franzen performs vivisection after vivisection on his unsuspecting creations, the better to understand them inside and out. Has Franzen written the Great American Novel? It's great, and it surely is American, but applying that three-word adjective to this tome at this point is a little hasty. I suspect, because it makes specific reference to pop culture icons of its time (Stanley Tucci, Jennifer Aniston, and Chloe Sevigny -- amongst many others -- are all name-checked here), it might not be relevant five or ten years down the road. Is it a darkly comic vivisection of a modern midwestern family? It sure is. Funny and tragic at once, Franzen is able to straddle the line between these two tones with remarkable ease. His book is truly insightful, mercilessly satiric, and endlessly readable. Not a book that will change the world, mind you, but still well worth the read.
Rating:
Summary: Actually lives up to the hype!
Review: Don't listen to the negative reviews- this is an excellent novel. The story is fairly simple, and imagine that most of you have gotten well accquainted with it in the below reveiws, so I won't go into it. But the plot is what drives this story; rather, it is the wonderfully crafted characters of the Lambert family. Some complain that there are no likeable characters in this book, and to a certain extent this is true. But they are all sympathetic. Watching their lives fall apart is a tragic, moving experience.
Rating:
Summary: The Corrections is one of a kind
Review: Franzen creates a piece of fiction that is "truer than true" by taking the reader on an extensive journey through the emotional curves of every character in "The Corrections." From the beginning the reader is exposed to the effects of growing in a dysfunctional Midwestern family through the lives of five family members. The reader is thrown into emotional conflicts with each family member, only to later learn why this character possesses these problems. There is Enid, the matriarch, who has been in an emotionally unfulfilled marriage for nearly 50 years and is now forced to take care of her husband, Alfred, who is suffering from Parkinson's and dementia, instead of enjoying a lovely and relaxing retirement. Alfred, a stern retired engineer and perfectionist, is trying to accept, although unsuccessfully, the loss of his motor skills and rational thought process. His struggles connect with the reader and make you feel compassion and empathy for this bitter man.
Chip, the middle son, losses a shoo-in tenure, teaching position for having an affair with a student and is struggling to make it in New York. He decides to take a spur-of-the-moment and apparently unethical job with his ex-girlfriend's ex-husband in Lithuania. Gary, the oldest, is suffering from depression-although from the appearance of his prestigious banking job and picturesque family and house, one would never know it. Denise, the youngest and only daughter, is a successful chef who is struggling with identifying her sexuality after a failed marriage. When it appears she has, another relationship occurs, leaving the reader wondering what she wants.
Franzen's orchestration scenes between self, siblings, lovers and parents are exquisitely composed. He successfully revels each character's moment of recognition for the reader. It truly is a masterpiece and the reader will relate, scoff and laugh with these characters throughout the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Spot on.
Review: Franzen does a brilliant job of highlighting the most intricate tics in each of these characters in a way that makes them sympathetic, even when they're being horrible to each other and themselves. Not one of them is formula, which is impressive, given the current popularity of that horrific "series" fiction. Nicely done.
Rating: 
Summary: It's a sequel
Review: There's a reason "The Corrections" is averaging three stars in spite of the hype: it doesn't deliver. Now while I could go on about its essential emptiness, how Franzen is busy saying "look at me" with every line, there are enough reviews that do that quite well. Let me instead guide you to two gems that got virtually no promotion at all, but which are eminently more interesting-are, in fact, everything Franzen's book is cracked up to be: Vincent Czyz's "Adrift in a Vanishing City" and Paul West's "The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests". Just click on either of these and read the reviews (West's book has been out of print for several years and has only recently been reissued.) It's a shame that while genuinely brilliant literature languishes, overbloated, overrated and overwrought fiction like Franzen's is offered up to the world as a modern classic. (The only thing "The Corrections" has in common with some of the far better books to which it has been compared is its size, which means the critics who made the comparisons never actually read the literary monuments they are trying to set "The Corrections" next to.) "Adrift" and "The Place"-not to mention the pretentiousness of Franzen's book-are reminders that it's the writing that counts, not the advertising budget, whether or not Oprah talks about it on her show. As the Run DMC song goes, Don't believe the hype: it's a sequel.
Rating:
Summary: Caveat emptor
Review: It's ironic that a book that covers so much of modern Americana is swirling in the throes of its own hype - I guess life does imitate art. There's seems to be some debate here about whether The Corrections is a brilliant, black comedy of 20th century manners, or if it's a pretentious, wordy, cynical piece of .... Well, like everything else, it's a matter of personal taste. Being a Manhattan-based web-consultant who loves William & Sonoma catalogues, I found it to be hilariously and painfully true to life. I was unable to put the book down after the first five pages. Some of my friends couldn't get through the first paragraph. If you're like my friends, then put the book back on the shelf and walk away, because you're not going to find anything different later on. The book is highly stylized, and there's no point in slogging through it if you don't like stylized books. While the book does cover a lot of modern societal obsessions, I wouldn't call it a satire. Like all good books, it is really about universal aspects of the human condition, love, sickness, and loss. The blue tuxedos and fusion restaurants are beautifully described, but serve mainly as a backdrop to the characters' personal tragedies. Each one is consumed by hisn (or her) failure to secure what we all want: love, forgiveness, security, and a sense of place in the world. They are achingly vulnerable, but also hampered by flaws that make it impossible to relate meaningfully to anyone else. What I found so disturbing about the book was that it showed how we are all inexorably shaped during childhood, before we have any choice, and there's no guarantee we'll be able to buff out the psychic dents we're left with. Enid and Alfred are each repellent in their own way, but Alfred dies miserably while Enid gets a second chance. Chip and Denise muddle ahead, while Gary's left with a wife who uses his family against him. It irks me a bit that so many reviewers here saw the characters' flaws as an indictment of American society, though perhaps that is what Franzen intended. Reading some of what's written here, you'd wonder why the Bible prohibits avarice and envy, as they were clearly invented in America some time during the industrial revolution. I really hope that Franzen's intention is deeper. For instance, there are obvious parallels between Franzen's "Mexican A" and chemically-based personality facelifts on one hand, and real-life anti-depressants on the other. I don't think that anyone would seriously argue that Prozac destroys your personality, though. What really struck me was that Franzen's miracle drug took away the *capacity for shame*. For me, the corrosive nature of shame was a major, and moving, theme. I also liked lefty, intellectual, lit-crit Chip's obsession with an unattractive undergraduate who unabashedly enjoys herself and her life. That, I think, is the point Franzen really wanted to drive home. Life is hard enough. Why make it worse for yourself and everyone around you? All that being said, I would not call this an epic piece of literature. It's funny, sad, touching, and timely. But not timeless.
Rating:
Summary: May bring on depression and mental illness!
Review: I respect this work as being a unique and well-written piece of literature. But I have to admit that I found it highly disturbing! I guess I'm not used to reading such 'dark' books. The characters in this book seemed to hate themselves and everyone around them. I found myself thinking that people with a history of depression and/or mental illness should stay away, as it is liable to bring them down!! As much as I wanted to like the characters, I couldn't. Perhaps that was Franzen's whole point, and if so, I understand it, but it wasn't very entertaining for me! All the jibes he made at society were understood, and the book has value in that sense, but the "disgusting factor" cancels everything else out in my opinion. I give it three stars because it was interesting at times, and I think he is a talented writer. However, I'm used to reading books with sentences you understand the first time!! I had to re-read a few of the more complex sentences, I must admit.
My favourite line though, is when Denise has mixed feelings and thinks, "Easy for you two. You can split in half". I could relate to that!
Rating:
Summary: It's a sequel
Review: There's a reason "The Corrections" is averaging three stars in spite of the hype-it doesn't deliver. Now while I could go on about its essential emptiness, how Franzen is busy saying "look at me" with every line, there are enough reviews that do that quite well. Let me instead guide you to two gems that got virtually no promotion at all, but which are eminently more interesting-are, in fact, everything Franzen's book is cracked up to be: Vincent Czyz's "Adrift in a Vanishing City" and Paul West's "The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests". Just click on either of these and read the reviews (West's book has been out of print for several years and has only recently been reissued.) It's a shame that while genuinely brilliant literature languishes, overbloated, overrated and overwrought fiction like Franzen's is offered up to the world as a modern classic. (The only thing "The Corrections" has in common with some of the far better books to which it has been compared is its size, which means the critics who made the comparisons never actually read the literary monuments they are trying to set "The Corrections" next to.) "Adrift" and "The Place"-not to mention the pretentiousness of Franzen's book-are reminders that it's the writing that counts, not the advertising budget, whether or not Oprah talks about it on her show. As the Run DMC song goes, Don't believe the hype: it's a sequel
|
