Rating: 
Summary: Expect big things from this one.
Review: I can already see this becoming the novel of the year. Pulitzer, National Book Award, yeah, I can imagine that. For a long time Jonathan Franzen has been sort of a writers' writer, one of those people who doesn't publish frequently but whose name keeps cropping up if you read about writing. "The Corrections" should bring him to a wider readership--a good thing since I cannot remember a book that broaches more complex topics in a more readable fashion.The corrections the title refers to are of all kinds, the economic, personal, and mental changes that people go through in the course of their lives. In this case, every member of the Lambert family is going through some sort of correction, from dad to mom and all three of the kids. Dad Alfred is a distant fellow, now more so because of an advancing case of Parkinson's. Mom Enid has had it after years of Alfred when he was in good health, and now she is really at the end of her rope. Daughter Denise is a famous chef exploring all sorts of aspects of personal experience. The sons, feckless Chip and focused Gary might be from different planets, and Enid wants them to all gather at the old homestead for Christmas? Oi vey! Franzen likes all his characters and handles them affectionately, no matter what sort of foolishness they're up to. Whether you're still struggling to find your way, have given up and are just cruising, are being squashed like a cold cut in the sandwich generation, or are picking your way through the minefield of child-rearing, it's a pretty sure bet that something in "The Corrections" will resonate with you. There's been a lot of advance talk about this novel (notice avoidance of the word "hype," which would indicate that the book isn't worth the fuss) and it lives up to the joyous pre-press. If I'm right about the prize prediction, it will be a treat to see such a fine, thoughtful, and enjoyable book rewarded for what it tells us about ourselves in this place and this time.
Rating:
Summary: A great read...highly recommended
Review: I literally couldn't put it down. Reminds me of Wally Lamb. I laughed, I cried. My only question would be...I wonder to what extent this novel works best for people of a certain demographic, namely, middle to upper middle class people who are 30-35 and up. The novel deals with the crises of mid-adulthood such as coming to terms with parental decline and death, and facing up to the fact that your adult life didn't turn out as well as you might have hoped when you were a giddy twenty-year old. I found the book to be immensely hopeful, but I wonder if I would have liked it when I was twenty. I agree with some of the editorial reviews that Franzen's commentaries on contemporary society are spot on. I loved the depiction of Gary's kids. As a person who teaches in a college, I also liked the treatment of college life and literary theory. One of my favourite voices was Gary's, as he counted out his life in the rhythm of the stock market.
Rating:
Summary: In a class by itself.
Review: If you read only one novel all year, let it be this one--so powerfully moving, yet carefully constructed, that it will surely win every literary award of the year. Such a statement would be hyperbolic in any other context, but it is realistic here, and necessary to describe the magnitude of Franzen's ambition and achievement. Spanning the last forty years of the 20th century, this is a magnificent family drama focusing on the elderly parents and three grown children in a midwestern family. Labeling the characters as dysfunctional does not do justice to their uniquenesses or to the reader's ability to identify with them. Their difficulties as a family arise because the family dynamics require them to hurt each other if they are to be true to themselves. Enid, the mother, while not assertive in a traditional sense, is nevertheless controlling, cleverly wielding the age-old guilt ploy to get her own way. Albert, suffering from Parkinson's-induced dementia, is trying to hang on to the last shreds of his independence and dignity, while causing enormous strains on Enid and the rest of the family. Gary, the eldest son, often manipulated by his wife and children and often depressed, believes in toughing it out, an attitude he imposes on his mother and siblings. Chip, something of a flake, is the insecure author of a never-finished play, a wandering spirit who goes to Lithuania, where he is hired to create a web site to siphon money from gullible American donors. Denise, a very successful and much-sought-after chef, is bisexual, constantly enduring her mother's urging that she find the right man and start a family. When Enid decides that the whole family must come home to St. Jude's for "one last family Christmas," the stage is set for an emotional family reunion which results in many "corrections." Seven years in the making, this novel elevates intimate, domestic drama to whole new heights, smoothly incorporating themes which question who we are, what we owe our parents, how we become who we are, and where we are going. Franzen's pointed observations about contemporary life--as revealed by upscale restaurants, the green movement, cruise ship behavior, use of the internet for fund-raising, dispensation of "happy pills," nursing homes, and even the crassness of Christmas--enliven the plot as it spirals around and through time and the lives of the five characters. Albert's decline, told in part from his point of view, is particularly heart-breaking. This book is a wonder, offering a stunning and intimate view of a middle-class American family, its values, and its dreams, all presented with wit, sensitivity, and enormous power.
Rating: 
Summary: Style A, Content C
Review: I was really looking forward to this book, having read Franzen's earlier manifesto regarding the decline of the American novel and the hilarious segment regarding failed screenwriter Chip in the New Yorker. But now it seems that Franzen's fallen into the same slag pit of postmodern irony that has claimed so many other talented writers of our generation. Franzen's writing style is unsurpassed in style -- witty, poetic, by turns tender and savage, reminiscent of Martin Amis and Dave Eggers. But the artistry of Franzen's writing only underscores the hollowness of the characters, the absurdity of the plot, and the utter lack of theme. Maybe this is all "intentional" (artist-speak for "I couldn't come up with anything else"), but the book is less a novel of scope and ambition than a bulky compendium of bitter wit unredeemed by insight or wisdom. It seems to me a failure of courage to take refuge in satire when Franzen clearly has the talent to write seriously about life. But this could have exposed him to charges of sentimentalism, that foulest of literary weaknesses, and he obviously is wise to that, as everyone seems to be praising this book for the very qualities it lacks. We already have enough absurdist literature and rancid black comedy whose main function is to showcase the wit of the the author at the expense of his characters (not to mention the reader still foolish enough to be seeking transcendence in American literature.) I finished the book in a mood of grim fascination, but overall I was disappointed and depressed. Like many other "literary" novels -- the very ones Franzen claims to despise -- the characters are glib riffs on contemporary stock characters (lesbian, yuppie, suburban psycho-matriarch) rather than characters that you believe in and might even sympathize with. The one character who comes to life is Chip, Franzen's surrogate, whose embarassing obsessions and pathetic stabs of ambition made me laugh out loud (the salmon-in-pants scene was a brilliant, A+ combo of physical comedy and literary flash -- if only the whole book had kept the promising pace of Chip's saga of urban hipster pathos!) I felt for Chip in a way that I never did for the other characters. And I was really put off by the unending saga of the father's battle with his failing body. There seems to be a belief among contemporary authors that unflinching, detailed descriptions of humiliating scatological scenes somehow makes a meaningful statement about the human condition. Actually, it comes off as a giant cop-out by someone who didn't dare to challenge the existential cliches of modern fiction. James Joyce countered his bodily obsessions with fierce flights of lyrical imagination that leave the reader drunk with the potential of life and art. Would that Franzen had done the the same.
Rating: 
Summary: DeLillo has no cause to worry.
Review: This book has sweep, it has ideas, it has social commentary. But its style is tedious and trivializes everything. The sentences go clunkety-clunk. They are f-l-a-t. Sentences are crammed with predictable details. This is journalism and sociology trying to pass themselves off as literature. It's not working.
Rating:
Summary: Franzen's Breakout Book
Review: As author with my first novel in its initial release, I love to read a novel like THE CORRECTIONS. Jonathan Franzen has written an amazing book here. THE CORRECTIONS will obviously be Mr. Franzen's breakout book. With THE CORRECTIONS, Jonathan Franzen becomes a major novelist. It deals with a marvelously dysfunctional family as the formerly strong patriarch struggles against Parkinson's Disease and dementia. Franzen puts it all into this book. His prose is perfect. His tone couldn't be better. He has vividly drawn characters and a well-plotted story. I cannot imagine this book being better written.
Rating: 
Summary: Low family...High art
Review: Jonathan Franzen's finding of so much epic poetry in the most mundane and banal aspects of the 20th century American dysfunctional family would rank him among many fine writers of his generation. It is, however, make no mistake, his incredible skills as a writer and his compassion for the characters that transcends the arrogant voyeurism that could be considered the foundation of the very art form he has grown to master that puts him in Toni Morrison/Mishima/Steinbeck-land with this wonderfully heartbreaking book THE CORRECTIONS. Franzen for me never actually defines what he means by the term that is the title of the book. And that's where part of the magic is. The theme of corrections; corrections of mistakes within lives that could be so easily be thought of as existential mistakes as a whole is a leit motif that continuously returns in the novel at the perfect times in the most unexpected, artistic and inventive ways, from the most mundane to the deepest of allegorical levels. Franzen throughout this novel does not judge his characters, as much as he reveals their faults in such detail and context that one's desire to judge them as much as sympathize with them is seduced to the point of making the putting down of his book nearly impossible. By the same token Franzen does not make a judgement on Patriarchy, or capitalism, or, the concept of "race", or the tragic farce that often is what we call modern marriage. But in the weaving of his stories within stories, pasts within pasts, dreams within dreams, all centered around the final Christmas one aging mid-Western family plans to have with all their sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and grandkids--and demons--he reveals underneath his judgements of globilization, the intolerance for pain of any kind in American society (shown through our love of both dysfunction and pain killers) and insular suburbanism the many facets to all of these grand topics and ideas. He does so in a way that forces you to think about them; to feel them while you are thinking about them; to see your self and your own life in their context; all while never letting you forget that love does not conquer all...love is life itself. Oprah's incredible taste in literature brought awareness of this book to me--though, like most of the things she recommends, I didn't read it until the hooplah about it died down. You will find Jonathan Franzen's life and his family in virtually all of the characters, I'm sure--particularly the much beloved but ill-fated brother Chip (ill-fated in the way Jung describes fate as the life made from the denial of ones true passions). You will see the history of America in the 20th century in the rapidly declining Patriarch of the novel, and his eldest son the depressed suburban financier in a marriage spinning out of control, and the father's growing soulless relationship with his wife of 48 years. But above all, you will feel as if you have moved into the architecture of the human soul through his writing style; a style that has moments of shimmering transcendence the likes of which will make you refuse to believe these characters are not a family you've known all your life...or maybe even was raised by. I will be looking for the rest of his works based onmy experience of him and this great novel. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: The Commendable !
Review: As an Asian reading about a dysfunctional or seemingly dysfunctional family in suburban America, there is a bit of 'bought that, read that' deja vu in a sense. In The Corrections, it is the Lambert family on full display. Your normal ( although what goes for normal these days inclued previously banned items like bi-sexual daughters and under average non achieving sons), average, middle class family. Where the author takes this mediocrity to a new level is by transposing the characters with ideals and illusions that somehow appear grand and yet are trivial, which somehow redeem these characters in your eyes yet make you wonder what kind of dinner guests would they make in your home. Enid is the matriarch of the family, a genteel, fussy, bossy lady who lives with her ageing and soon to be demented husband.Her three children - two sons and a daughter have memories of their home and parents that seems in turbulent soulful contrast to the memories that the parents have of them. And so stretches the novel, till the entire family gets together for a last 'family' christmas, driven by their agendas, drunk on their own miseries.
Spots of brilliant insight strike the reader...the marital tango of expectations cast Enid and Albert ( husband) is a very relatable light. Very funny, very sad...they could be your neighbours next door.
Rating:
Summary: Uproariously Funny Rage
Review: Franzen's verbal pyrotechnics blow me away. Besides that, he's uproariously funny. When reviewers compare The Corrections to John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom series, though - as they have - the limitations show. The way Updike kept Rabbit's brain under 24-hour uncensored surveillance took emotional risk, even after the technique became a literary convention. I wouldn't call The Corrections an emotionally risky novel.
Maybe it's a peril of autobiographical writing that if you take on a family in which hugging is verboten, you show love by keeping a respectful distance. Actually, it is Alfred, the moral center of the family, who has decreed hugging verboten, and I think the big flaw in Franzen's writing is the respectful distance he keeps from him.
How can I say this when he has gone in like a war correspondent at the front line to chronicle Alfred's battle of dementia against scientific reason? What could be more heart-rending in its scatological silliness than this brilliant man being reduced to debating metaphysics with a turd? Alfred in his decline gives a surreal tone to the sanctity of family and suburbia, indeed to life itself. And yet...it's like picking on a doddering old man. I think Franzen has kept away from the young, lucid, and really dangerous Alfred. We know about his love of railroads and Schopenhauer and his hatred of those who fornicate in motel rooms next door. We see, vividly, how his coldness has made Enid brittle and vengeful and how, by extension, Denise grows up to be brittle while Chip and Gary are both drawn to brittle women. These children make me shiver, the way they expect coldness as part of love. But like them, I found it was impossible to really get to know their father.
Enid, on the other hand, breaks my heart with her repressed intelligence and repressed sex appeal that goes unnoticed by everyone except neighbor Chuck Meisner. She misses nothing, but she has a whole lifetime invested in deluding herself.
Down there in the Lambert basement, amidst the metallurgical lab and the Yuban coffee cans that Enid chooses not to believe reek of urine, Franzen presents a compelling case for suburbia as a breeding ground for toxins of the spirit, with some kind of parallel to the radioactive-waste-filled cinderblocks in the childhood home of Chip's Lithuanian buddy Gitanas. What other writer has such keen powers of observation, as with Enid's passive-aggressive preparation of rutabaga the color of plasma and liver that, when cauterized, "had the odor of fingers that had handled dirty coins"? That Dinner of Revenge is pure Norman Rockwell in shades of puke. More than a tad contrived, granted - just contrived enough to become a classic movie moment in the hands of the right director. Assuming that there will be a movie- any bets that Franzen will make peace with middlebrow when it has a Hollywood price tag? I'd kind of like to see it directed by the loopy Coen brothers.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worthy of the hype
Review: My mother-in-law read the book and did not highly recommend it. This should have been a red flag of warning to me since she has recommended some gems to me over the years. But I took it and read it anyway.
Maybe it is honest writing, but the writing just seemed to me so in love with itself, or the author was so in love with himself. My family was dysfunctional in a variety of ways, and yet I could not empathize with any of the characters in this book. Why does writing like this garner such literary accolades? I thought it was overlong and I was not impressed overall especially with the ending.
Not only has this author shunned and insulted all of Oprah's reading fans, his novel has now turned me off as well.
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