Freedom, Jonathan Franzen

 

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen is a book from an author who piqued my interest.

Started: 12/16/2020
Completed: 12/21/2020
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: An Obama list of books

Words for which I sought help:

cicatrix -- a scar left by the formation of new connective tissue over a healing sore or wound

Review:

This book was well written and the author had some excellent turns of phrase, "The kitchen was a nauseating never-cleaned sty that smelled like a mental illness."  Despite that, I found the subject matter ugly.  Who is cheating on whom with whom and wreaking havoc on one another's mental state is not something that I find interesting.  If this is intended as a cautionary tale, I already have that caution.  If this is not, then it feels more like a Peeping Tom kind of novel.  It largely made me uncomfortable for the privacy of fictional characters.

The rant on the Republican party was prescient.  It was reflective of Bush, but it was also projective of Trump.  I try hard to pay attention, but Franzen was completely on it.

The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen is a book I cannot remember why I selected, but it seemed to me at the time like the author was particularly good.  I think it had something to do with the National Book Award.

Started: 5/22/2020

Completed: 5/24/2020

Recommendation: Mild Recommendation

Recommended By: National Book Award?

Review:

This is a carefully crafted story with insights into how it might feel to suffer from dementia.  It is also about how people fool themselves and others.  It is rife with mistakes that people could make and rife with patterns of mistakes that people can fool themselves into making.  The story is told from multiple points of view that occasionally overlap.

It feels like this is a vignette in a much larger story that starts well before the book does and goes on well after.  That makes sense.  The anchor to the story line is an aging father and grandfather who starts on the edge of dementia (though flash backs show a fully lucid individual, as one would expect) and ends with his being in full dementia.  This is not, really, however a story about his dementia, but more a story about how everyone around him changes during his struggle with reality.

I was not moved by the story and, though it was well told, have some trouble recommending it.  I didn't gain any insight from it and tale is overall a little sad.