Rating: 
Summary: Middle-class family satire
Review: The book deals with five characters: Enid (mother - age 73), Alfred (father - Age 75), son Gary ( the oldest), son Chip (age 43), daughter Denise (age upper 30s). Home turf is St. Jude in the Midwest. Gary and Denise now live in Philadelphia, Chip roams between New York and Lithuania.
Enid terrorizes everybody with motherly love. She is stuck way back in her own generation. Alfred has Parkinson's and is slipping fast into dementia. But he is a strong, upright character and the only one who always makes sense when he speaks. Gary is a banker who runs after money and tries to figure out his family. Chip is the one with the brains, but he refuses to use them in any constructive way. Denise is a celebrated cook/restaurateur who can't make up her mind if she should sleep with the boss or the boss' wife.
The characters of the parents are drawn with great care and one can emphasize with them. And one has to love flighty Chip. Gary isn't really around that much. And the portrait of Denise is confusing and two-dimensional.
We all know the outline of the story by now, so it does not have to be repeated. In my opinion, the author had so much fun writing paragraphs that make you chuckle - that he forgot the plot.
Rating: 
Summary: A fun, fun book
Review: I know this book is supposed to be a "Garp"-like leap from literary fiction to popular fiction. Whatever it is, it is the most fun, readable, thought-provoking novel I have read in years.
Rating:
Summary: this book is important
Review: If you don't like epics don't read this book. However, if you've ever wondered if the American literary community would produce or was capable any longer of producing another Sinclair Lewis or anything close to him - read this book. And I don't say that lightly, since as far as I'm concerned Sinclair Lewis sits on the right hand of God. We've got some great writers working in this country right now, don't get me wrong. And I know this isn't Jonathan Franzen's first book; I'm ashamed to say I'd never read anything of his before. But I don't think I'm going to now, because I'm afraid. I wish I could have my memory selectively erased so I could reread this book and bring to it the same sense of 'Oh, my God!' that I did as I read it the first time. You know that stuff Tom Wolfe is always saying about the job of the American novelist, the work needing to reflect the massive scope and sweep of the country as a whole? The Corrections does that, while at the same time illuminating the tiniest nuances behind human motivation and interaction, in a way that Tom Wolfe himself must envy. Read this book if you want to be reassured about the state of American writing today. But also read it if you just want to thoroughly enjoy a book on every level.
Rating: 
Summary: Snoozefest
Review: The Emporer has no clothers..This overhyped behemoth of a novel was supposed to resuscitate the flagging interest in American literature...clunky prose...tiresome dialogue...and a wearying plot to slog through make this novel the Deathblow to American letters...where is our generation going to find an inspired genius and madman like Selby, Robert Stone, Burroughs, or [...] i'll even take Kerouac??...the fact that this book makes the Oprah Book Club speaks volumes...[....]I am looking for some crazy [...guy] like a Coleridge who is going to change my world...like good old KNut Hamsun to carry me off into pastoral realms where language and human passion meet in characters who are REAL..and not pasteboard cutout types of a Middle American family whose pain was about as real to me, as the Brady Bunch episode where Tiger knocks down the house of cards...Give me Inspired Literature or Give me Death!!
Rating:
Summary: A book that lives up to the author's promise
Review: Books are written and then books are read and after a while books are catagorized. Then books that have not been written are catagorized and books that are no longer written are catagorized with the ones not written. Then someone gets the bright idea to write one of these unwritten books, but, unfortunately, it was already catagorized and so there is really no writing being done-- just dictation, as it were.All the hype up to and around "The Corrections" would suggests Franzen's novel should suffer from this fate; fortunately, it does not. Here is a book for the "willing skeptic" -- a person who does not relinquish control over his own opinion just because the media has lauded or lambasted the book; but who nevertheless does not resist the writer's efforts. Franzen is able to marry nicely the accomplished prose of his contemporaries and significant character arcs of his predecessors-- just like he said he would, when he started the novel several years ago. For too long "literary" novels were written by writers for writers, and popularity a curse. With "The Corrections," Franzen has made very very good wriiting accesible by using it to compel complex characters in the kind of settings and plots necessary to engage a modern reader-- an alien familiarity.
Rating:
Summary: Finally. A real novel.
Review: Brilliant. Amazing characters. Amazing writing. It could be the perfect novel. Don't let the Oprah's Book Club inclusion scare you. This book is far better than that, not some "make me happy, make me laugh, make me forget what the real world is like" escape. Run from the mirror if you must, but no other book captures American life right now like this one.
Rating:
Summary: ITS NOT NEW
Review: OK, we heard about this for months and I couldn't wait so I bought it as an eBook before publication. And I am glad I got it so inexpensively. While I found this book interesting and fast moving it is certainly NOT the great American novel as hyped (I reserve that nomenclature for books like Dreiser's An American Tragedy). Between movies and other similar novels, let's face it...we have heard this stuff before. I found it only momentarily moving, most of the characters to be flat, and the ending...what a jolt with no real prior motivation. In all honesty, this was a WHINING book with no meaning for our society. SO much better has been written over the years by other authors that I wonder why the hype here. The attempt at relating the demise of our often greedy culture was naive at best, and after the fact as we are living it now. I will quickly forget this one.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting stuff
Review: A lot of reviews have commented on the hype surrounding this book. But the hype for the most part consists of critics and other writers saying they liked it - and what's wrong with that? Especially when they're talking about a good book, which this one is. "The Corrections" is an achingly sincere attempt to talk about what it is like to live here now - all of it, from the splintering families to the pharmaceutical cures to the food snobbery to the way globalization has suddenly made it possible for little Jimmy from Beanville to end up working in Uzbekistan. It's very funny and smart and expertly architected -- I'm a writer myself, and I know how hard it is to keep all those balls in the air, and to switch among them while constantly keeping the reader clued in to what is happening -- but what really hooked me is the way that Franzen has of capturing the insane hurry of lives today, the way people seem to hurtle around in this hot-brained hurry, colliding from one postponed catastrophe to the next. (Good grief, that's a sentence of Franzenian length.) Did I mention that the characters are beautifully drawn? Like any novel, this one has things in it I didn't care for that much, but the bottom line is that the book gave me a great deal of pleasure. It's the authentic article.
Rating:
Summary: Settling old scores.
Review: Beware, parents of baby boomers. You may find out what they really think.
Rating:
Summary: "Genius" Wasn't Hyperbole
Review: Franzen's new novel "The Corrections" is a work of genius, even if many of the critics actually agree. It's at once a character study of a family, a biting satire of American life, and a historical novel about our time. The novel isn't dead: genius writers like Anne Tyler, Richard Russo and Johnathan Franzen are keeping it alive! Thank you!
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