The Corrections

Rating:
Summary: One Great Book!
Review: Our story begins in the ancestral home of the Lambert family, in suburban St. Jude. The house, though it has seen better days, still maintains its façade of upper-middle-class style, with tasteful furniture and knick-knacks from around the world strategically deployed to give the appearance of gracious living. Within this house, Enid and Alfred Lambert wage the long-running and tireless war of a couple who have never agreed on a single thing. Skirmishes are staged in the living room (each side capturing territory with successive furniture purchases); in the hall closet (where Enid, on the strength of her oldest son's advice, squirrels away financial correspondence that she tells Alfred she has mailed for him); and in the basement (where Alfred, inexplicably, fills old Yuban cans with urine when there is a "nice little half-bathroom not twenty feet away").

In more urban locations around the country, the three Lambert children are fighting their own battles with their respective demons. Gary, the oldest, is battling depression, his infuriating wife, and his materialistic brats; Chip is struggling with a rapidly disappearing sense of self-worth, after an affair with an undergrad leaves him jobless and heavily in debt to his sister; and Denise, the youngest, is learning that her penchant for making destructive choices is something of a hindrance to her chances for happiness. On top of all this stress is the burden of dealing with Enid's increasingly strident demands for a last family Christmas in St. Jude, and Alfred's rapidly deteriorating condition. There is also a brief but extremely gratifying cameo from a talking piece of poop, which ought to be enough to sell the story to any discerning reader.

Franzen has an amazing gift for making terrible things funny. Marital discord, debilitating disease, the general awareness that your life is falling apart - these things are not humorous, but in Franzen's capable hands, you will find yourself laughing anyway, shaking your head in incredulity at his way with words. In addition, the plot is so dense (but dense like a rich chocolate cake, not dense like a vacuous coworker) and so intricately shot through with little jokes and recurring details that, upon finishing the book, you'll want to immediately turn back to page 1 and start over again to find all the things you missed the first time through.

Corrections will repay you handsomely with hearty guffaws and the reassuring sense that you're not the only one whose life is hellishly unfair. In a world of cumbersome books that you'd rather throw away than pack up and move, The Corrections is worth its weight in gold. Pick up a copy! Also recommended is another entertaining Amazon quick-pick I enjoyed tremendously: The Losers' Club by Richard Perez. Happy reading!



Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down.
Review: I wasn't aware of the hype when this book was handed to me. (Yes, I live under a (book-filled) rock.) Hype or not, I love this book. There are a lot of books about weird families with issues but none of them are as well done with characters so alive and real. This book is definitely character-based and not plot-based so some might find it slow moving. It's a book to be savored. When I finished it, I had the distinct feeling of saying goodbye to friends after a wonderful visit.

Rating:
Summary: not just being contrarian; I honestly didn't like it
Review: All the hype surrounding this book really excited me. Finally, a piece of fiction I can sink my teeth into, I thought. Then I started reading.

Maybe my family just isn't dysfunctional enough? I really didn't find any of the main characters sympathetic or intriguing, with the possible exception of Alfred as he struggles invisibly to maintain control over his body and life. Enid, along with most of the other characters, was a total mystery to me. Chip I found downright odious and not sympathetic in the least.

Nevertheless I kept trying to like the book. I stuck it out for about 200 pages. What finally made me put it down and walk away was Franzen's writing style. There are apparently lots of people, some of them on prestigious award committees, who love the way this man writes. Personally I cannot fathom why. To me, the writing reeks of narcissism. While struggling through the book I had a persistent mental image of the author as an insufferably pompous academic, smirking to himself as he typed out ironically modest responses to his fan email, the majority of which had been sent by pompous academics exactly like him.

But then, Oprah liked this book enough to choose it for her book club, and she's hardly pompous. What I propose is this: if you pick this book up and do not start to feel some kind of kinship with the main characters within the first 100 pages, put it down and don't pick it up again. Don't subject yourself to Franzen's self-indulgent prose for anything less.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the Price of Admission
Review: I resisted "The Corrections" because of the all the early hype, but Franzen pulls it off and honestly lives up to the hype. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Corrected
Review: This is a good critique on the Amercian middle class today. There are no two-dimensional characters in the book, and the personalities of each one of them are described in depth in the story, which is rarely seen in other novels. I am moved by the ending of the book, although none of the characters is adorable. However, the book is a bit too long. Had the author refrained from writing long sentences (sometimes one sentence took up a whole paragraph!), the book would have been even better. I've recently read another great book titled BARK OF THE DOGWOOD which is equally intricate and well thought out. I highly recommend both it and THE CORRECTIONS.

Rating:
Summary: One of my all-time favorites
Review: I absolutely love this book. I've read hundreds of novels and this one is in my top ten. It is beautifully written and makes mundane suburban life seem interesting and important and... cinematic. If you are an avid reader, I bet that you won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: A New Favorite
Review: I loved this book. The characters in this quintessentially dysfunctional family are totally belieavable and totally loveable. Maybe this book was just a little too long, but overall an absolutely excellent read. Loved it.