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The Corrections: A Novel Paperback – September 1, 2002
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER
“A spellbinding novel” (People) from the New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections is a comic, tragic epic of worlds colliding: an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions, a new world of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed.
After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives.
The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself that, despite certain alarming indicators, he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man―or so her mother fears.
Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
- Print length576 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPicador
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 2002
- Dimensions5.5 x 1.44 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-109780312421274
- ISBN-13978-0312421274
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Editorial Reviews
From The New Yorker
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
Review
“You will laugh, wince, groan, 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.” ―The New York Review of Books
“Marvelous . . . Everything we want in a novel--except, when it's rocking along, for it never to be over.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“Jonathan Franzen has built a powerful novel out of the swarming consciousness of a marriage, a family, a whole culture--our culture.” ―Don DeLillo
“Looms as a model for what ambitious storytelling can still say about modern life . . . Franzen swings for the fences and clears them with yards to spare.” ―San Francisco Chronicle
“The novel we've been waiting for...a stunning anatomy of family dysfunction...a contemporary novel that will endure.” ―Esquire
“In its complexity, its scrutinizing and utterly unsentimental humanity, and its grasp of the subtle relationships between domestic drama and global events....It is a major accomplishment.” ―Michael Cunningham
“Frighteningly, luminously authentic.” ―The Boston Globe
“A genuine masterpiece . . . This novel is a wisecracking, eloquent, heartbreaking beauty.” ―Elle
“The brightest, boldest, and most ambitious novel I've read in many years.” ―Pat Conroy
“Brilliant . . . Almost unbearably lifelike.” ―The New York Observer
“Funny and deeply sad, large-hearted and merciless, The Corrections is a testament to the range and depth of pleasures great fiction affords.” ―David Foster Wallace
“This is a spellbinding novel . . . that is both funny and piercing.” ―People
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : 0312421273
- Publisher : Picador; Reprint edition (September 1, 2002)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 576 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780312421274
- ISBN-13 : 978-0312421274
- Item Weight : 1 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1.44 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #118,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,086 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #7,879 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #8,702 in American Literature (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels--Purity, Freedom, The Corrections, The Twenty-Seventh City, and Strong Motion--and five works of nonfiction and translation, including Farther Away, How to Be Alone, and The Discomfort Zone, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the German Akademie der Kunste, and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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The central premise of the novel – a dysfunctional family of five trying to gather together for one last Christmas – serves as a kind of frame story, with every individual chapter delving into the backstory of a main character. Individual stories are not as cleanly separated as in Decameron or Canterbury Tales, though; author often switches to a different POV to show us same situation from different angles, and the narrative often shifts between past and present, showing us how this or that character's formative years made them what they are today. That Corrections is so character-focused can prove a big problem for some people, because all major and most of minor characters are extremely unlikable. They are paranoid, delusional, self-centered, unfaithful, manipulative, domineering (the list could go on forever, really), and their redeeming qualities are few. Nevertheless, none of them are bland or uninteresting, and you will quickly discover that although all of important characters are A-holes, there are actually many different degrees of A-hollery; who knows, maybe you'll even end up rooting for some of characters (or at least hate them less than others). The author even plays a little bait-and-switch where a seemingly most well-rounded and nice member of the family later turns out to be one of the worst human beings in the book.
A lot of people here and elsewhere complained that the absence of sympathetic characters made the book unreadable for them. I beg to differ. Franzen's characters are unlikable, but they are hardly unsympathetic. Numerous flashbacks help us understand that they are hardly to blame for most of their shortcomings; in most cases no one is really to blame. Also, they are not quite unrealistic, and while Franzen is often extremely satirical in their depictions (for example, one of the family members thinks "At least I didn't become a religious fundamentalist like my father"; his sons are named Caleb, Jonah, and Aaron), they still don't devolve into outright caricatures. Speaking of caricatures, Franzen dishes out a lot of criticism aimed both left and right: academic feminists and racist bigots, Midwestern traditionalists and coastal elites, capitalists and socialists all get their due portion of witty barbs. On the other hand, while Franzen steps on a lot of toes, he is unlikely to continue stomping on any particular foot; his criticism is aimed at society in general, and the way it twists and corrupts individuals.
Last, but not least, I've found Franzen's writing style to be pleasantly witty and well-flowing. I've had to re-read a couple of complex passages to actually get them, but the writing in general is not ponderous or self-indulging at all. I'd recommend Corrections to anyone interested in fiction with realistic and complex characters.
Baggage. The baggage we accumulate as we age, no matter how happy or successful we think we are or pretend to be. This is a book about an extended family trying to cope with and compensate for a lifetime’s worth of baggage. The early going is over-the-top quirky and a bit annoying, but give the novel a chance to hit its stride.
Some Amazon reviews suggest that the essence of the story is the question of whether the matriarch can emotionally bully her kids and their families into gathering for “one last Christmas” together. The intended gathering is certainly a big part of the novel, but I’d describe it as a major metaphor for a broader story: it’s the scaffolding on which the author builds a narrative involving a rich multitude of complicated characters and sprawling storylines that collide with each other in fascinating ways.
With dry humor and an extra scoop of irony, Franzen delivers deep insights into the ordinary frustrations and annoyances we all experience. He’s especially strong at portraying “conversations” in which the participants are talking past each other or saying one thing when they mean something else entirely. You’ll see yourself in at least some of the characters and scenes. The details of the characters’ lives may not resemble your own, but it’s easy to relate to their experiences.
Top reviews from other countries
JF es un novelista que aúna la profundidad de los personajes y la de la visión global del mundo con un lenguaje deslumbrante y en raras ocasiones gratuito. El uso de la ironía es tan demoledor como elegante,el sentido del humor preciso e inteligente. Uno empieza por subrayar una frase brillante y acaba por hacerlo con la mitad del texto.
En esta novela en concreto hay momentos de una tensión sobrecogedora,como la conversación entre Chip y Melissa después de su primer encuentro sexual,una pieza de la masculinidad a la deriva y la feminidad anclada como no he leído desde Diana o la cazadora solitaria,de Carlos Fuentes. A must.