Rating: 
Summary: painfully hard to read
Review: I hated this book. It was completely manic and and full of characters that you just wanted to smack over the head until they snapped out of their self-involved lives. Perhaps there was some redeeming quality that I would have found in the end, but after forcing myself to get through the first 350 pages, I did myself a favor and shelved it.
Rating:
Summary: Pretention compromises art
Review: This book is a self-indulgent, skewed vision of family life.
I could not empathize with any character. I was also bored by the introduction of plot elements that are little more than points on a social/political hot-button checklist.
Franzen is obviously a gifted wordsmith and
intelligent person, but his storytelling faculty needs a major overhaul.I'm glad to see that this book is being compared to Delillo's
'White Noise': Never have two works been more deserving
of each other's gassy company. Both will continue to age poorly.
Rating: 
Summary: Picture of Dysfunction
Review: A character driven picture of dysfunction. Mom is relentless in trying to live her life through her children while denying the realities of the real life burden she has -- attempting to single handedly care for her husband who is feeble of mind and child like. Her joy in getting the family together for "one last Christmans" lasts only moments before she must face this reality. A great read for anyone/everyone who has ever been part of familial dysfunciton.
Rating:
Summary: this book is junk
Review: I could not stand this book or any of the characters. It is pretentious and nihilistic. Franzen gives us a stay-at-home mother who is lost and depressed. Her husband is cold and her kids are jerks . Nobody knows how to love another human being. Is this supposed to be deep or something? May I add that he has very cynical views on sex. Read closely the way in which he describes Denise and you will see what I mean. In short, we have a bitter family and nobody seems to grow. What is "the correction", as Franzen calls it, at the end of his novel? Well, I do not want to spoil it, but it is a pretty sad conclusion.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the Effort
Review: This novel delivers a deep and detailed description of the struggle and pain of modern life for an aging couple and their three adult offspring. The story proceeds slowly as the separate lives of the five primary characters are described in exquisite detail. When the lives of these characters converge, the pace often slows even further as the descriptions overlap to present each character's perspective and internal struggles. Plot, of course, is secondary to deep character development. A focus of this character development is the different ways in which the second generation struggles with power and sexuality in their primary relationships, and how these struggles relate to the relationship of their parents. Character development aside, this novel also contains some vivid descriptions and biting social commentary. Some of the most memorable descriptions are of the aging father's dementia brought to life -- the horror and humor of these waking dreams. The author brings wit, wisdom and humor to his critiques of modern life: slick IPO presentations and insider trading; company buyouts and subsequent layoffs, international internet fraud, bad parenting books and lax parenting; profit-driven medicine and pharmacological quick fixes; and countries torn apart by the greed of a few. The author uses tiny strokes to paint a picture both disturbing and beautiful.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not mindblowing.
Review: The Corrections is certainly readable and hard to put down despite its length and occasional tendency to drag (for me). I found the characters depressing and for the most part, irritating. It reminded me of Raymond Carver stories in its overtures towards meaning, but then I was left feeling kind of empty. I didn't find it thought-provoking, no more than a Raymond Carver story is. It makes you think for a minute and then you forget the book entirely because it is essentially not that deep. It didn't make me think what it was to be a family, or whatever Oprah said it did. For me it had more to do with your parents dying, there being no adults around anymore by the time you grow up (which is a paraphrase of a quote of Chip's, near the end of the novel), and with dealing with your parents' reversion to childood in their old age. I suppose all of the characters are diseased in one way or another, Al is just the most obvious one (the father with Parkinson's). By the end, I was more moved than I had thought i would be, and I cared whether the characters sorted out their lives or not. It was a bleak and pretty depressing book. Overall, it's a good read for the beach or the subway but does not really deserve to be up with DeLillo and Pynchon in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply a great book
Review: The depth of Franzen's characters moved me as a reader: Chip's fall from Grace with his university sexual exploit; Gary hiding his drinking from his family, and most painfully, from his favorite son; Denise sabotaging her New York Times praised culinary work by sleeping with her boss's wife; and of course Enid, "seventy years old and ready to make some changes in her life." And how simply the tortured lives of the characters are tied together as one family tense in the face of a mother's insistence that the family spend one last Christmas together. Truly a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Modern Book for Modern Times
Review: This is definitely a book for modern times. Every character was disfunctional. Because of this I found myself wanting some type of retrobution to punish them. However, it took me a while to understand that the very actions that made me dislike the characters were a result of the type of punishment I thought life should throw their way. Until I reazlized this I just wanted to get to the end of the story. There was one supporting character (Caroline) who was so deceitful, that reading any part of the book with her in it made me hate the story. However, I must admit that it takes truly great writing to elicit these types of emotions (Caroline manipulated her husband and used their kids against him). I am sure many readers will be able to relate in some way to at least one of the characters (everyone's family has some level of disfunction). If you have trouble as I did with the book, I can assure you that the ending is worth it. If I had to rate the book based soley based on the ending I would definitely give it 5 stars. In the end Franzen pulls the story together extremely well. The characters find out that many of the assumptions they held about each other were false. It was these false assumptions that helped shape each character into who they were. Anyway, with out giving anything away, Franzen ties everything up masterfully. On a technical note, I found that I needed to keep the dictionary next to me while reading the book. Also, there were many references both literary and historical that I did not know.
Rating:
Summary: Stay for the End
Review: Generally, if hundreds of people have already reviewed a book I don't spend time to add another. But this book is different. It is not the great epic that the cover notes might make you think but it holds you with some witty prose and characters that reflect everyone of us. The Lambert family is a bit maladjusted with crazy Denise who can't seem to find her sexuality, Chip who goes through woman for a hobby when he isn't conquering foreign countries and Gary who is a typical married middle class psych case. But what held me were the parents, Alfred and Enid who had grown old together. Enid who had put life on hold forever and Alfred who was failing quickly, burdened with dementia. These two struggled through the story, they battled to survive a crippled family, bad health, growing apart, misunderstandings and the misgivings of having lived your whole life with someone you love but don't understand. When one of the children says to Enid about Alfred, "He's never going to get better is he?" the futile struggle of life all came into focus. The title has many meanings. The Correction can be economic, it can be what Enid did with her life at the end, it can be what Chip did after Lithuania [read it and this will all make sense]it can be what I realize I need to do with my life after reading this book. If this review seems disjointed read Franzens book and it will make sense. Slow at some points but worth reading to the dramatic, heart wrenching, gut gnawing, painful end.
Rating:
Summary: My experience with this book
Review: 1. Heard that it was a masterpiece
2. Found it at the library
4. Took it home
5. Opened it
6. Read the first sentence
7. Realized it was not a sentence,but a sentence FRAGMENT
8. Closed book
9. Took it back to the library
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