Rating: 
Summary: bye-the-book (I junked it)
Review: Another nude emperor. This book is so trite you can actually diagram it. Let's see, we have the remote father, the passive-aggressive mother and their three adult children: the over achiever (angry at his parents but trying to please them), the underachiever (angry at his parents and trying to annoy them), and the one whose trying to figure it all out (can't decides whether she's angry or not, a lesbian or not, blah, blah, blah.) Pretty tired stuff. So-called set-pieces involving pharmaceuticals, Eastern Europe, Parkinson's, cruise ships, and talking fecal matter are calculated to give the book the loopy, serendipitous aura of original, important fiction, but nothing really resonates. It's all been predigested by the author, then regurgitated in four-syllable words. Although it's been awhile since I read the book, I can't remember a single character's name. Probably because none of them, with the possible exception of the mother, ever came to life. The next time the New York Literati line up behind the next Great American Novel, the least they could do is make it worth our while.
Rating:
Summary: Morose, Malignant, Morbid & Malicious
Review: The subject matter looked boring and unappealing but I was intrigued by the Oprah controversy and agreed with Franzen's characterization of the Oprah logo as smacking of coporate ownership. Also the grand Pat Conroy as well as many other authors whom I admire gave it such high praise that I had to check it out. What a disappointment. Such sadness and depression and unreedeeming desperation. It magnifies the ugliest characteristics of its subjects without teaching anything, without inspiring and without awakening anything spiritual, redeeming or grand. It pretends to allow one to identify with secret longings or sick inner motivations but that's all it is, a pretension. It rubs the reader's nose in grotesqueness for no apparent purpose other than to gratify the author's need to depict sick and disgusting scenery (the moving "...", the father's private enema). A complete waste of my time. After all the praise and accolades I thought it would be worthwhile but it's just turned out to be the emperor with no clothes.
Rating: 
Summary: Yeck!
Review: What is all the hype about? I consider myself a well-read, well-rounded individual who loves all types of literature. This is not it. Knowing that Oprah has had her hits and misses, and after hearing all the accolades I went ahead and bought the book, even though the jacket description did not interest me. I should have gone with my instincts.
Not only could I not identify with any of the characters, (not even the boarder characters that he details in such length) I was appalled and repulsed by them all. Having a father with Parkinson's, this books treats the terrible debilitating disease as a mere nuisance of getting older. You can't feel for the father, the mother or any of these brats they raised.
Do yourself a favor; skip this book, unless you like to be depressed and sad. If you do, this book is for you!
Rating:
Summary: Excruciatingly annoying and very, very boring
Review: So this book is supposed to be on a par with Mann's 'Buddenbrooks' (well, it is according to Michael Cunningham on the cover of my paperback copy). Forget it (and please don't insult one of the greatest writers who ever lived). I had no trouble at all finishing the over 700 pages that 'Buddenbrooks' covers. But the only way to finish 'The Corrections' was quitting it, a decision I only postponed because on principle I never quit a book. So I struggled through 320 pages blindly ignoring the obvious fact that it wasn't going anywhere. Well, it wasn't. 'The Corrections' seems to be just the next book by a novelist who took a course in contemperary writing. All basic rules taught in such a course can be seen to full effect in this novel (or whatever you should call it). They run something like this, I imagine:
1. Avoid clear story lines at all times, but instead apply a garble of as many flashbacks and flash forwards as you can possibly fit in.
2. Annoy your reader with constant slow-motion, focussing on details of details, or on reflections on musings on thoughts of characters. Hallucinations are also great! The content or relevance of these are not an issue; the more trivial they seem the more suggestive of hidden depths they will be (and your reader, who is far less clever than you are, will never find out that there are no such hidden depths). Don't forget: banality is the hallmark of a contemporary novel!
3. Be very, very clever. Insert as many citable oneliners as you can. Don't worry if they are totally gratuitous ("Dry land lacked this z-axis"). Also, it is good to add many difficult words, a few in foreign languages, preferably. Don't ever say that 'things are quiet because father has taken to sleeping a lot'; better say that 'a Pax Somnis is descended on the household'. Doesn't that sound literary! And of course show off everything you (or your encyclopaedia) know: add little asides on say, Scandinavian history, Baltic politics, Dutch waterworks, psychofarmaceutical treatment or organ registration.
4. Don't bother with chapters or even paragraphs - just ramble on at will! Please wallow in the conviction that your novel is so engrossing the reader will never want to put it down, so no breaks are needed. Which, by the way, saves you the trouble of structuring your plot. Or better still, you don't even need one!
5. Use lots of similes. Far-fetched is always OK. Or you can be just plain ridiculous and, say, liken the act of intercourse to a model railroad engine tunneling up 'warm and gently corrugated recesses'.
6. Avoid any trace of normality in your characters. A story becomes so much more interesting if people are paranoid, selfish, destructive, stark raving mad, abusive, addicted to drugs and porn, incontinent and generally dysfunctional! No character, not even a secondary one, should be without its great, dark tragedy.
7. Add gimmicks: a little picture of a logo here, a little diagram there, marked 'figure 1' - very sophisticated!
8. Of course sex should always be the clue to everything, which also gives you great opportunities to write very modern things with lots of four-letter words! You may even occasionally want to print these in capital letters.
9. Other, preferably revolting details involving bodily fluids or excrement are also very contemporary: use them! Well, you get the picture, and it isn't pretty. What Franzen tries to do has been done already, and so much better, by for instance Jay McInerney or Douglas Coupland. They prove that it is actually possible to write gripping novels about ordinary people, and that you can expose some of the tragedies of living a modern, urban life without reverting to self-conscious intellectualism, pedantry and forced 'literariness'; that you can even do so without boring your reader into a stupor. So please, don't waste your money on this book, as I unfortunately did!
Rating:
Summary: Wish I Could Finish This Book
Review: I reached page 341 weeks ago and haven't picked it up since. If I didn't feel guilty over the [money] I spent and the fact that I've rarely ditched a book, I'd sell it used. Franzen is a pretty good writer and there are lots of insightful and amusing tidbits about human behavior scattered throughout, but the story itself is tedious and drawn out ad nauseum: it's just not very compelling nor are the characters. Maybe the book reminds us that some dysfunctional families are in fact as boring as this one and their members equally one-dimensional. How depressing. The novel might have been better if it was more concise and the clever tidbits showcased in short stories. I'll try to finish it, but don't pull out your plastic-buy the paperback.
Rating:
Summary: What was she thinking?
Review: ...I kept reading it to the end in order to find something of value, that surely must have been hidden in the early part of the book. Instead, I struggled through - looking for "the point" up to the very last page. There wasn't one character that I would go to dinner with, or spend any time with. Nobody that was interesting, cared about the human condition. What a mess of characters. And, the story as outlined on the jacket cover, was really nothing at the end...
Rating:
Summary: If you want to thoroughly depress yourself, read this book.
Review: There is not one happy thought in this entire book. It is quite painful to read. The characters are not only currently depressing, but they also have no hope of ever being any more optimistic at any point in their miserable lives. I have nothing against tragic characters, but in these characters there is nothing redeeming about the pain and suffering that they endure. The author seems like a very disturbed individual. Even when it is not necessary to make a point, he adds a depressing thought completely unrelated to the main message he is trying to convey (i.e. the hampster story in the last chapter when Denise is walking down to the basement). Don't waste your time or money with this book.
Rating:
Summary: Treats his characters like bugs under glass
Review: I could happily live the rest of my life without reading another dysfunctional family novel, but the critics were so united in their praise of this book that I had to see what all the fuss was about. Much ado about nothing, as it turns out. It should come as no surprise that Franzen looked down his nose at Oprah; Franzen looks down his nose at every character in his own novel. He manages to flay everyone from midwesterners to east coast intellectuals, conservatives to liberals--and while his wit is certainly well-honed, his utter lack of empathy or affection for his own characters makes this novel feel both cold and flat. He gives them glaring faults without saving graces, crushing losses without a hint of triumph. Then he sits back and mocks the way they flounder under their burdens. Literature with a capital L? More like Pretension with a capital P. This book is all head and no heart.
Rating:
Summary: 111 pages in and the book doth suck
Review: I can barely get through this book. It's awful. Go read "Babbit" instead. This book is going to the Strand where they'll probably use it to prop open the door.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply an excellent book
Review: It really doesn't surprise me that many would rate this book with less than 3 stars; actually it is impressive that many readers give it the 5 stars that it deserves. The book actually finishes well. There have been a few award winning books that fell flat with me, but not this one. If you as a reader can face truth, read this; it is a good look at life today with depth and breadth. I suppose it is possible even to enjoy the book without feeling the message. Personally, I was disturbed with every passage about Alfred Lambert. His condition was frightening as it was displayed. Then I realized that people like this (in the real world) get these conditions for a reason (not coincidence). That was what was disturbing; his body obeyed him and helped him escape. In the end, I had sympathy for him as well.
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