Rating: 
Summary: Command of Language but not Substance
Review: Franzen has a command of language. He is able to show and not merely tell, but what is he trying to show us? Other reviews suggest that it is too depressing. I do not see that this is a criticism. I enjoy art form that is capable of making one feel. That is where this, and many other novels fail. The characters are unoriginal, and pathetic. Where Franzen fails is in his artistic vision. He is unimaginative and lacks a connection to the eternal. This book is a book of a certain place and time. It is not timeless, and for this I find Mr. Franzin is without inspiration, and is uninspiring.
Rating: 
Summary: Contemporary Literature At Its Zenith
Review: You need two things in order to enjoy this novel: intelligence and a desire to read literature. If you are used to reading popular fiction with cardboard characters and neatly wrapped-up endings, skip The Corrections. On the other hand, if you meet the two criteria stated above, you are in for one of the most wonderful literary rides of your life. This is an exceptional, perhaps important, novel. The characters and plot are as interesting as one could hope for, and more importantly, they are as REAL as you will find in a contemporary novel. As the New York Review of Books sentence on the cover says, "You will laugh, wince, graon, weep, leave the table and maybe the country, promise never to go home again, and be reminded of why you read serious fiction in the first place." I'd read Franzen's prior works of fiction and found them to be pretty good, but in The Corrections, Franzen's prose transcends the ordinary to such an extent that it literally left me breathless at times. And he pulls this off while layering plots that had me turning pages into the wee hours of the morning.As for Jane Smiley, she chooses political correctness over literary value--her roundly and soundly criticized article in Harper's magazine alone more than proves that. Once you get into the lives of the characters in The Corrections, you won't be able to put the book down. It is contemporary literature at its zenith.
Rating: 
Summary: eh..so-so
Review: The book started off interesting. I was very impressed with Franzen's unique writing style and his hard hitting look at life, but somewhere he lost me. The story line and characters were a bit too cynical or maybe the tone of the book was too defined (which can be limiting and predictable). It seems like the author thought to portray a "typical" present day family but to me the characters' lives seemed to be over dramatized and certain aspects were too drawn out. Needless to say, I didn't finish the book. Maybe if I dragged my feet through it, I may have had more positive things to say. The only real thing that kept me reading the book was his brilliant writing ability.
Rating: 
Summary: A Reader on Long Island
Review: I cannot recommend this one. It drags on before attempting to make a point.
Rating:
Summary: Uniquely Disturbing
Review: A number of people made comments to the effect: "Oh, you're reading The Corrections? I couldn't get through that book." Now that I have read it, I may understand why. Reading this book is like looking at a skinned human -- you always knew that the blood and guts and bones were in there, but you generally focus on the more palatable exterior; it's disturbing at the same time that it is completely natural. The Corrections is like this. Lives laid bare; intrafamily squabbling, game-playing and meddling. Like an uncleansed soap opera, many times closer to real life than would be comfortable. I loved it, yet found it uniquely disturbing.
Rating: 
Summary: Horribly Funny
Review: This book was a long read, but at least for me, that means that it was good. When it takes me a while to read it means I had to think about it. There are things in this book which really shouldn't be funny, but Mr. Franzen somehow turns around the laws of humor. If you would like to see how other peoples families might be more dysfunctional than yours I suggest you start here
Rating:
Summary: The Banal and the Beautiful
Review: It's too bad this book got caught up in the "Oprah Controversy" as it tended to obscure the fact that The Corrections is an incredible accomplishment for Jonathan Franzen. It's not a perfect book -- there are a couple short sections that more or less require plowing through -- but the insight, intelligence, and just plain gorgeous writing more than repay the reader's patience. As many others have observed this is a story about a dysfunctional family. From the doggedly cheerful matriarch to the variously beleagured adult children these are, indeed, deeply flawed people. Still, I really have to part company with those who feel these people are somehow unreal or trite. Chip, the self-involved, middle child desperately clinging to the very last shreads of his pretentious, psuedo-hip youth, is painful precisely because he is so very recognizable. Nor can I agree with the readers who found this a hopeless story devoid of any real redemption. After Chip returns from Eastern Europe, barely escaping with his life, he returns to his parent's very ordinary American house in their very ordinary American suburb. What follows is some of the most beautiful and moving writing in comtemporary fiction. Gazing at the street, the furniture, even the carpeting in this deeply banal and, at the same time, extraordinary, wonderful place, Chip at last understands. And Franzen captures the very essence of our country's deeply flawed, depressing, beautiful soul. In the end, Chip accepts responsibility for himself and the family he's always loved. In the end, hopefully, so do we.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the wait
Review: I'm a literary snob and I know it. I'm not someone who reads Oprah's picks, specifically because they are Oprah books. I have read some of her choices, but because the ideas intrigued me. However, recently, I've chosen to not read any of the later picks. This became a difficulty for me as I was intrigued by the premise of The Corrections, but you couldn't find a copy anywhere in a store that didn't have that hideous gold "O" on the cover. Therefore, I would not read the book, even though I consider myself (in my pretensions) to be a "literary" reader. But, then, recently, about a year after the event, I found a Recorded Books copy of Franzen's book in the library. A perfect compromise, I thought. I can experience the book without the repercussions that being seen with "an Oprah book" would bring to my stellar reputation. I told you I was a snob. The Corrections is about the Lambert family: Alfred, the father; Enid, the mother; and Chip, Gary, and Denise, the children; and their lives and relationships with each other and fringe people. Alfred is stubbornly refusing to believe his slow descent into senility. Enid wants her quickly spreading family to have one last Christmas together. Chip is struggling with losing his teaching job due to a wild drugged-out weekend with a student. Gary is attempting to receive the money his father refused from an invention from long ago that a large conglomerate is using in a breakthrough pharmaceutical that, ironically, could treat Alfred's dementia. And Denise is having difficulty separating her work and sex lives. Each family member's story interlaces with others and those of people involved in their lives. I found the family's stories much more interesting that those of unrelated folks, but the book as a whole is phenomenal. Franzen comes from the modern flock of literary authors like David Foster Wallace who sprinkle pop-culture references and new uses of words within a basic story framework, making the reading of a novel once again a "novel" experience. Despite Franzen's (and my) biases against certain types of publicity, he has written a book that deserves all the praise and fame that it can get, from whatever the source. This is the new generation in action. Take note.
Rating:
Summary: Finished it last week, still thinking about it.
Review: The Corrections is an amazing novel. Franzen took on an array of issues and situations to tackle, a daunting task for any writer, but he did it with grace and intelligence. His careful attention to rich character development has left Alfred, Enid, Gary, Chip, and Denise still floating around in my mind.
A great book to examine ones family and what it means to living in the perils of American capitalism. Well done piece of work, I couldn't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: But pass the Zoloft, please....
Review: Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" is the best-written book you'll ever not want to necessarily finish. Imbued with the hyper-present in all its convoluting and devious ways -- the Net, neo-Europe, club drugs, insider trading, et al --, it is exact in its artistry and its several narrative lines showing that a family can be more dysfunctional than the sum of its parts. Of the many memorable moments, two immediately come to mind (perhaps explaining my overall ambivalence here): First is now-elderly Alfred, in full Parkinson's-caused dementia in his stateroom on a cruise, trying to trap the quick, agile bits of excrement that are escaping his system and must be put back in. The panic, confusion, shame, and general self-loathing are so palpable that it becomes a shared experience of a possible future all sane folks must fear. The other is the depressing dynamic too often employed by those ill-suited couples teetering on the brink of a messy divorce: Using the kids as weapons of mass degradation and denial of affection. This frames Alfred's son Gary and wife Caroline's tense existence with their little boys. It is portrayed so acutely that it could serve as a case study for all the budding marriage counselors out there. Undeniably, this is a dazzler, splendid in its narrative wizardry. It'll remain with you, like it or not. Perhaps though you ought to look elsewhere for this summer's beach-read.
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