Rating: 
Summary: My Generation
Review: There is a huge mass of people living in this country today who were brought up by parents who themselves grew up during the depression and World War II. This generation, of course, is known as the Baby Boomers. Their parents brought them up in a particular way--the only way they knew how--because they believed they were preparing their children for the difficult life they expected would lie ahead of them. But the parents were wrong. Instead, life became ridiculously easy for the Baby Boomers, with the almost incredible prosperity that this country began to enjoy in the years following World War II. With the freedom and leisure time available to them, Boomers have pretty much questioned everything they've been taught, including the way they were brought up. This big, sprawling, hugely ambitious novel attempts to shed some light on the subject. It is a story of these Boomers, now in or approaching middle-age, and the parents who raised them. It is loaded with superbly drawn characters, accurate and compelling dialogue, magical descriptions, dazzling wit, and it is completely engrossing. But, alas, it falls short of the lofty goal it sets for itself. It is the story of the Lamberts--Mom and Pop and their three adult children--and takes place over the last twenty or thirty years right up to . . . well, the day before 9-11. It is a huge book, 550 pages, and in general divided into three parts: the stories of the children's adult lives with a good smattering of their childhoods. Interspersed among this are big chunks of the lives of their parents and their travails as they enter a problematic old age. It's a family that has problems. The eldest son is a depressed borderline-alcoholic, tormented by his inability to exert any influence over his immediate family; the middle son is aimless, jobless and psychotic after a disastrous affair with one of his students; the youngest daughter is a sexually confused mass of indecisiveness; the father is demented and hallucinatory; and the mother is a manipulative control-freak. All of them act without any sense of morality, yet all are inexplicably and continually wracked by guilt. Before going any further it must again be stressed that this novel is a splendid entertainment. As mentioned it is loaded with wit and intelligence and it is often wildly hilarious. Clearly, the youthful author has talent oozing out of his pores. This is a novel that steams by like a locomotive and it almost seems like you're out of breath by the time you get to the end of it. But it is precisely at its end, when you begin to reflect on it, that you realize that not all of its pieces fit. Sure, it's a dysfunctional family, we get it. Dad was work-obsessed, demanding of himself and his children, but lacking in kindness and love. Mom's response was to get various small revenges against him, and attempting, constantly, to change him. To "correct" him, as it were. The children, particularly the eldest, adopt this habit of "correcting" those around them, with dismal results. The author gets this right: this is not atypical of American families of this age. There was discipline, there was sharp--sometimes unfair--criticism, and there were large expectations. These parents were not perfect. Mr. Franzen offers a classic example: the middle son, at the age of about eight, ends up sitting at the dinner table for three hours because he didn't eat his vegetables, and because his parents, warring with each other, forgot about him. This is good. The depiction of this family during the kids' childhood rings true. But the novel primarily takes place after they have reached adulthood, and their actions as they mature seem overly dramatic. All of them have periods of what can only be described as insanity. Chip, the second son, is practically catatonic, unable to function after his setback. Gary, the eldest, is out of touch with reality and morbidly depressed. Denise, the sanest one, is nevertheless incapable of developing a heterosexual relationship with somone her own age. Are the lives of these people really representative of the lives of most Boomers as they reach middle age? The answer is . . . not really. Most Boomers, perhaps after some stops and starts, manage to lead relatively normal, contented lives. These characters do not. (Also troubling, and completely unexplained, is their utter lack of any moral compass. And there is no mention of religion anywhere--an obvious oversight.) No, the novel does not go wildly astray, but it does go astray. It's just too far over the edge. Perhaps the reason for this is that the author, not yet forty, is simply not yet experienced enough to have pulled this kind of thing off. Again, he came close--a lot of this strikes remarkably close to home--but the failing here is that there is very little sympathy shown for the characters. Indeed, we are expected to detest Gary, and the last page of the novel is practically hateful towards the mother. And this is where the novel falls. Its lack of perspective prevents it from reining in the characters, and Mr. Franzen effectively loses control of them. They lose their realness to us, and the novel loses the chance it had to be truly enlightening. Superb effort though. Mr. Franzen is an extraordinarily talented writer, and deserves a tremendous amount of credit for even attempting such a difficult task. Perhaps in a few years, he'll get it more accurately.
Rating: 
Summary: Hours of my life that I will never get back...
Review: OK, so what did I miss? I hated this book!! Actually, I can't think of many books that I hated more than this book. Perhaps I am not quite as avant-garde as other readers,or perhaps my childhood was just too functional to understand this piece of work. I enjoy suspending belief as much as the next reader, but this is asking for too much. I felt like no plot was ever really established and that the author never really got a handle on his characters - he tried to portray them in too many dimensions and ended up making me hate all of them (particularly Enid), with the exception of Alfred. As I said, this book represents wasted hours of my life that I will never get back...but it represents 7 years of Mr. Franzen's life that he will never get back. Better luck next time.
Rating: 
Summary: The dark side of the human heart
Review: I tried to like this book; however, I found the plot to be bleak and sad and the very opposite of noteworthy. There is not one likeable character doing one kind, charitable or generous act during the entire plodding book. I am not looking for an uplifting book with a "message" or a puerile happy ending, but I would like to think that there is more to life and living than is characterized in this book. I like books that make me think while I am reading them and, if I am fortunate, when I have finished reading them. Jonathan Franzen has created a group of greedy, self-serving characters who never deviate from our initial introduction to them. The author has talent - the characters are well defined and the plot makes sense within the confines of the structure created by Franzen. The world is surely peopled by persons who belie his definition of living within a family. This book saddened my heart.
Rating:
Summary: I Should've Known Better
Review: With all the hype surrounding this book I should've known better than to buy it. I read half of it and finally had to put it down when I realized it wasn't going to get any better. There is nothing enjoyable about this book. I couldn't care less about the characters - I didn't like them, I didn't hate them - they're pathetic and uninteresting. The author goes off on meaningless tangents that add nothing to the story. It seems as if he took ideas from many different stories and threw them together. I find it hard to believe that Oprah liked it. I've read most of the books on her list and while I didn't care for some of them, at least they were cohesive stories. Don't waste your time or money on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Meet The Lamberts
Review: The Lambert family consists of five people: Enid, her husband Alfred, and their three children, Gary, Chip, and Denise. Alfred has developed Parkinson's disease and his physical and mental health is steadily and tragically deteriorating. Enid wants the entire family to get together for one last Christmas at their home in St. Jude, presumably before Alfred dies. Enid originally wanted Gary to bring along his wife and children for Christmas, but it is apt that he eventually goes by himself. After all, this book begins and ends with the immediate family. _The Corrections_ concerns the interrelationships of these five characters. The books also gets into the individual lives of the three grown children and with Enid's increasing inability to cope with Alfred's illness. What I found particularly interesting were the various individual relations and alliances that form within this family, including the expectations each family member has for the other. Gary is Enid's favorite, and as a child endeavors to work hard to please his mother. Chip, the intellectual and later errant middle son, is Alfred's favorite, and the only one that Alfred is able to trust after he becomes ill. Alfred is seen calling Chip's name for help, even when Chip is not present. Both parents are concerned for Denise, who is the youngest and their only daughter. Denise becomes a talented chef and restauranteur. Enid is afraid that Denise is having an affair with a married man and that she will never marry. Denise has other ideas. This is not just another book about a dysfunctional family with quirky characters. Each family member is well-drawn, three dimensional, and flawed. I got to know and love each of them for their faults, with the possible exception of the money grubbing Gary. I especially liked Alfred, whose plight, although quite sad, is also inadvertently funny, as his illness gets him into a number of serio-comic situations. Alfred is a very bright man with the potential, unfortunately unrealized, to be the tool of his own cure. By the book's end, I was convinced that any of the Lamberts could have been a member of my own family.
Rating: 
Summary: Is That All There Is?
Review: I wanted to see what all the hype was about - like most people - and couldn't believe my eyes when this book was on the shelf at the library. I snatched it up and dove in. The story is engrossing, the prose is excellent, the feeling is there, but I was disappointed with all of the unnecessary prattle. I did not care about the molecular structure of the drug Corecktal. I did not need to know the most minute detail of the operations in the Ukraine. This slowed the story and interrupted the flow. I think a good 150 pages could have been pared and the book as a whole would have been better for it.
Rating:
Summary: What is all the fuss about?
Review: Overall this book was not worth reading. The writing is excellent but the characters are unsympathetic and there is no plot. A little more than half way through I gave up and gave the book away. I didn't care what happened to any of the characters. This surprised me since I can finish almost anything. Don't waste your money.
Rating:
Summary: two words- talking feces
Review: Do not feel the need to read this book unless you are a pretentious bore so earnest to prove that you are literary and current that you look and talk like Jonathan Franzen himself. This book would be "quaint" in five years if it weren't so detail-addled and completely devoid of humor. In its desperate quest for relevance, it creates completely unbelievable characters and embarrassing attempts at existentialism. After reading this, I felt much the same way I felt at the end of Titanic... what were those reviewers smoking? Did they pop some Mexican A-? I'm mean, I'm usually a big fan of reading about old guys with incontinence and hallucinations about excrement, but this piece of doo-doo not only talks too much, it stinks.
Rating:
Summary: Get over yourself Franzen..you are good but not THAT good..
Review: I was really, really, looking forward to this book. I thought, by reading some of the reviews that this guy was going to be clever beyond clever.
But in reality, this book is overwritten, to the point of absurdity. This guy makes Cormac Mcarthy look like Robert Fulghum. I didnt like the fact that the characters were not believable, and in some cases that would be fine..but in a book about the craziness of family, I have to really be into the characters. I also find it hard to take authors that are just to cool for the rest of us. He tries to hard to let us know that he is a smart alec..elitist, know it all. This one was not for me.
Rating:
Summary: Dullsville
Review: The Corrections with or without the hype is the most boring book I've ever read. It's about a dysfunctional family who continues being dysfunctional until the very end. I didn't feel compassion for any of the characters. Jonathan Franzen gives too many details about using the bathroom, exactly what everyone ate, how they ate it, why they ate it. If you want to fall asleep, read this book. It's too long and extremely boring.
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