Rating: 
Summary: Absurd, and not in a good way
Review:
I've really enjoyed the other things that I've read by Franzen (The Corrections; How to Be Alone, a book of essays), but I found "The Twenty Seventh City" to be nearly unreadable. The only reason that I persevered to the end was that I was stuck on a 6-hour cross-country flight with nothing else to read. As it was, I wound up skimming the last 100 pages.
Two of the biggest problems with this book are an overabundance of minor characters and a very choppy narrative, in which the average scence is about 1 to 2 pages. It's just jump after jump after jump for 500 pages, with no sustained development of anything. I also found the basic premise (a police colonel and cousin of Indira Ghandi from India comes to the US to take over the police force of St. Louis, where she uses a band of Indian terrorists to manipulate the city's business and political elite and control the real estate market) so implausible that it was just a constant stumbling block all though the book. None of the characters struck me as remotely believable or interesting. I suppose it was intended as some sort of farce, but I don't think I encountered a single thing that I thought was humorous. Then there is the dialect... rather than developing distinctive characters, the author writes in truly awful dialect (eg, a character who says things like "Habout time" or "Hanyway"; and of course, a police officer with a lisp).
Altogether, this may be most excruciating piece of fiction writing I've read in the last 5 years.
Rating: 
Summary: an over-ambitious mess...
Review: 'The Twenty-Seventh City' is my first experience of Jonathan Franzen. Suffice to say it did not make me a fan. While I can understand where some amazon.com reviewers found it to be a panoramic story of greed and corruption, I share the views of most reviewers who feel this effort was WAY over-blown, chaotic, and a depressing reading experience. I was glad I finished it, and would have been happier not to have started it!Okay, the story is about a corrupt police official in St Louis. She comes from Bombay and brings along a host of criminals, junkies, and other misfits. Naturally she is corrupt and terribly ambitious. Challenging her are an assortment of St Louisans who are, well, only modestly corrupt but rather inept... this book has probably a dozen major characters with at least twice as many minor characters. It's all very tiresome to keep track who is who, especially since many of the characters seem to have little impact on the story. This book was not published in the UK for over a dozen years, not until Franzen became popular because of his 'The Corrections' ... I can understand completely why UK publishers didn't bother with 'The Twenty-Seventh City' for so long, and I don't expect it will be reprinted here any time soon. Bottom line: some decent prose but overall a dreadful reading experience.
Rating:
Summary: an over-ambitious mess...
Review: 'The Twenty-Seventh City' is my first experience of Jonathan Franzen. Suffice to say it did not make me a fan. While I can understand where some amazon.com reviewers found it to be a panoramic story of greed and corruption, I share the views of most reviewers who feel this effort was WAY over-blown, chaotic, and a depressing reading experience. I was glad I finished it, and would have been happier not to have started it! Okay, the story is about a corrupt police official in St Louis. She comes from Bombay and brings along a host of criminals, junkies, and other misfits. Naturally she is corrupt and terribly ambitious. Challenging her are an assortment of St Louisans who are, well, only modestly corrupt but rather inept... this book has probably a dozen major characters with at least twice as many minor characters. It's all very tiresome to keep track who is who, especially since many of the characters seem to have little impact on the story. This book was not published in the UK for over a dozen years, not until Franzen became popular because of his 'The Corrections' ... I can understand completely why UK publishers didn't bother with 'The Twenty-Seventh City' for so long, and I don't expect it will be reprinted here any time soon. Bottom line: some decent prose but overall a dreadful reading experience.
Rating: 
Summary: St. Louis never saw so much drama
Review: ... unless you really want to. And you better have good reasons in that case. I can't imagine what they could be though. If you want to ponder, circa 1988, the problems facing U.S. cities, or terrorism, or conspiracy, you'll not find anything much here. This is Franzen's first book, written 13 years before the materpice The Corrections (which is why you're considering this one, right?), and the kid had not yet assembled his talents nor adequately honed his intelligence. Rather than itemize its marginal successes against it's tedious failures, I'm gonna streamline for you: the only reason to give this a workout is to see how much the author, as a storyteller, truthteller, character-meister, has developed since. And that endevour is one of research. Read The Corrections again instead. Seriously.
Rating:
Summary: Do Not Read This Book
Review: ... unless you really want to. And you better have good reasons in that case. I can't imagine what they could be though. If you want to ponder, circa 1988, the problems facing U.S. cities, or terrorism, or conspiracy, you'll not find anything much here. This is Franzen's first book, written 13 years before the materpice The Corrections (which is why you're considering this one, right?), and the kid had not yet assembled his talents nor adequately honed his intelligence. Rather than itemize its marginal successes against it's tedious failures, I'm gonna streamline for you: the only reason to give this a workout is to see how much the author, as a storyteller, truthteller, character-meister, has developed since. And that endevour is one of research. Read The Corrections again instead. Seriously.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings
Review: Although I enjoyed parts of the book many many parts were very long winded and didn't seem to connnect with other parts; very disjointed and disorienting. Some the sexual innuendos and encounters seemed out of place and forced. Then ending left you curious and wondering about what really happened to some of the characters.
Rating: 
Summary: character, context- and he can write!
Review: an amazing book- a delight for a casual encounter (airport bookstore with 3.5 hours to kill-) or a long, leisurely read.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Bother
Review: As an avid reader and a fan of "The Corrections," I had much higher expectations for this novel. I found it very difficult to get into, in fact, I had to read the first 30 pages twice to have a clue as to what was happening. I found that the story dragged on and was exceedingly unrealistic, especially towards the end. I am not even sure I fully understood the conclusion because the story became so convoluted. I purchased "The Twenty-Seventh City" in combination with "Strong Motion" from amazon.com and this book turned me off so much to Franzen's writing that I doubt that I will even read "Strong Motion." I think Franzen really missed the mark with this one.
Rating:
Summary: Runs out of gas
Review: Franzen constructs an intricate and interesting narrative. Unfortunately, that only gets him within 150 pages of the novel's end. The pat ending is supposed to reflect the chaos of wildly opposing forces all coming head-to-head. Instead, it comes across as an author's attempt to bring closure to a story that he hadn't fully plotted out and didn't know how to end.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Pomo Mystery
Review: Franzen is a great talent, although Strong Motion, his other novel, is a better, more complex book. The basic plot revolves around Jammu, an Indian law-woman who is made police chief of St. Louis. The mystery side of the book is largely pedestrian. What is interesting is the way the Franzen weaves in the theme of suburban seperation from the inner-city. This theme is quite prescient given recent thought-media coverage of emergent suburban "pods" (see Atlantic Monthly Aug. 1998 for details). This book is ultimate vacation reading for post-modern elitist types.
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