Rating: 
Summary: Yet another book about a dysfunctional American family
Review: Skip this book. There really is nothing to like about it. The characters are so revolting that you find yourself hating them and the book. The only reason why I finished the book is because its for our book club, otherwise I would have cut my losses after the first chapter. If I could have rated it a zero or less I would have!
Rating: 
Summary: You're Either Gonna Love It or Hate It...
Review: Folks, if you want to read it, do so. Don't be put off by all the negative reader reviews. Yes, this book does seem a bit long-winded, and Jonathan Franzen could use some editing here, but he has created some incredibly memorable characters, all of which we can all easily identify. I find it funny that some reviewers fault Franzen for the creation of these characters. Why? Is Enid Lambert too much like our mother? Does the Lambert siblings' penchant for self-destruction make us cringe? "The Corrections" isn't for everyone. I admit there were some passages where I had to force myself to finish. But I applaud Franzen's ability to word-play and create situations and atmospheres that are well beyond the norm of what passes for high literature these days. And ultimately, it is satisfying and worth your time. I can't recall a novel that has generated as much controversy in recent times, not since "The Satanic Verses". In fact, Jonathan Franzen expressed ambivalence about his book being chosen by that great denizen of taste...I liken this book to another misunderstood work of late, "Vanilla Sky" (a film I absolutely LOVE). Just because you didn't get into it doesn't mean it's terrible. But it does require an open mind and demands that you throw away what your conceptions of what novels are and should be.
Rating:
Summary: THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!
Review: After reading all the great reviews of this book, especially David Gate's piece in the NYT, I was anticipating a great read, and really wanted to like this book. I should have known when Gates not only used the awful word "microfelicities" twice in the same review, but spent half his time dwelling on the wonderful "minutiae" over and over again, extolling the virtues of the book because a character is neurotic enough to sniff a dishrag before wiping his hands on it, that the banality of this book is almost insulting. Anyone who thinks this family is anything more than mildly dysfunctional has never read a newspaper or seen a Jerry Springer show. Basically, the characters are all mildly successful, BUT completely non-interesting, self-absorbed, self-sabotaging individuals who would never have picked each other as friends if they hadn't been born into the same family in the first place. Maybe I was spoiled because I'd just read "All Over but the Shoutin'," by Rick Bragg and "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," by Michael Chabon, with their lucid, compelling voices, so this book seemed flat in comparison. I will say Franzen is capable of evocative writing, however. There is a superior stretch from page 185 to 263 that rises above the quality of the rest of the book -- like an island of charm and wisdom bursting from an ocean of ordinary prose -- but its appearance is all too brief. Once we pass this point we are again sailing in the duldrums. If an unknown writer had sent this manuscript to a dozen editors I have little doubt they would have summarily rejected it. It's a shame that this book won the National Book Award, because it only encourages more of the same. If you think Andy Warhol's rendering of a Campbell Soup can is art, you may like this book. Otherwise, I say, the Emperor has no clothes!
Rating:
Summary: The Corrections
Review: This is the worst book I have attempted to read in years! The characters are totally stupid and I could not identify or care about any of them. The writing style is long and laborious. I tried to like the book because of all the hype over it, but I couldn't finish it. I can't imagine how it ever made the best seller lists. I wish I had read the customer reviews before I wasted my money on it.
Rating:
Summary: Puppet Show
Review: Franzen's well crafted puppets take out their garbage, and his.
Rating: 
Summary: Decide for yourself ...
Review: The book was difficult to read in one respect: it was so easy to see parts of myself in several of the characters, details that I didn't think anyone on Earth would guess or suspect about me, that at times it became incredibly disconcerting to read. But then I realized, hey! J. Franzen isn't writing about me, this is fiction! Any book that can get under my skin like this one did deserves the term brilliant. But I will admit that it's not for everyone. For me it was the best thing since "Prince of Tides" and "A Prayer for Owen Meany".
Rating:
Summary: Hype hype hype
Review: Those who found this book boring must be really normal. I found The Corrections describing me too closely for my own comfort -- not in the acts of the characters but in their base motivations. Chip (off the old block) and Gary draw the x and y axes of my own bad character. Alfred (the Great) was truly admirable but made everybody uncomfortable. Wouldn't it be better if we just did away with the old guy and failed without his judgement? The book works psychologically and cosmologically for me, and even if the listing and language go over the top at times, one of the novel's very subjects is the over-the-topness of American life, the anxiety of being born with too much for hope to have meaning, of coming after the climax. The novel seems to be Chip's screenplay -- a tragedy that works better as farce. As the Great American Novel, well give me a minute longer before I say. I liked it better than Death of a Salesman because it made me laugh out loud, and at the same time I've seldom seen the grief of age rendered with such dignity. Indeed, that grief is all the dignity available. My own Alfred-Dad is nearing 80, and I moved to Alaska in part to escape his shadow, to escape the expectations of that entire hardworking post-WWII world in which every mother's son was expected to be a doctor -- or anything you want to be! Tocqueville warns that too much democratic freedom can weaken individuals. He says Americans don't fear death so much as sustained effort. Once I shook off the irritation that phrase caused me -- unjerked my knee -- I realized how many times in and since college that I have made decisions based almost entirely on how much more school I would need, and then, what if I didn't like it? None of us wants to reach the end of life and look back to find we didn't live, but our solution is to do a thousand stupid half-baked things to be sure we don't get stuck like Dad did. Anything but what Dad did. What is so scary about what Dad did? Why does that seem so much like notliving even when the evidence of his life dwarfs us? If The Corrections spells painful news, well, it's painful news. I know this review will help no one who has done everything right and who has no guilt. If you find no problems with the American way, if you feel no uneasy feeling about the world we live in and the way we live in it, don't bother with this novel. It won't change a thing. On the other hand, if you find that liberalism has played away its moral authority at rock concerts, in ridiculous parades, and under the presidential desk; and that conservatism has always masked a modicum of slit-eyed cruelty; and you're not so sure about yourself -- why don't you try it? A young novelist recently asked me if Franzen was the guy who blew off Oprah because he disdained the hype. Of course he wasn't, but I can only believe that blowing off Oprah is its own marketing strategy. The Corrections has its hype. Sure it does. Of course.
Rating:
Summary: simply marvelous!
Review: Although I've been deeply disappointed in many recent best-seller books, this one was simply marvelous. Deeply detailed characters, marvelous word play, and important issues (end-stage Parkinson disease, quality of life issues for aging parents). I could not have asked for more in a great book. Thank you Jonathan Franzen! Highly recommended to those who enjoy books with more meat than most.
Rating: 
Summary: Way too many words and not enough story
Review: This book is long and overblown but it has some entertaining parts, especially in his depiction of the dysfunctional son and daughter meeting the parents in New York before the parents leave for a cruise. My main criticism is that while the author captures some of the angst of the modern family, the characters don't really grow or change and not much happens to them. It would have been a more entertaining read if he had dropped a lot of the background information on minor characters and taken more effort with the major ones.
Rating:
Summary: Most disappointing
Review: I was quite disappointed by The Corrections. While creating the most disgusting characters I've encountered in quite some time -- not one had an endearing quality -- he has so overwritten this essentially sordid situation that I found myself skipping through entire sections and skimming others, which I usually never do. I guess I just kept hoping to find some spark of humanity or some magical turn of phrase that would cause me to care about anyone or anything that happens in this book. I was sick of this ... family early on and it never improved. The subject matter (the so-called dysfunctional family) is not the problem. There are countless other books that have brilliantly captured quirky, malevolent and insane characters: The Confederacy of Dunces and, more recently, Motherless Brooklyn, come to mind as two immediate examples. I do not understand why this wretched book has won so many awards.
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