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From Amazon
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2010: "The awful thing about life is this:" says Octave to the Marquis in Renoir's Rules of the Game. "Everyone has his reasons." That could be a motto for novelists as well, few more so than Jonathan Franzen, who seems less concerned with creating merely likeable characters than ones who are fully alive, in all their self-justifying complexity. Freedom is his fourth novel, and, yes, his first in nine years since The Corrections. Happy to say, it's very much a match for that great book, a wrenching, funny, and forgiving portrait of a Midwestern family (from St. Paul this time, rather than the fictional St. Jude). Patty and Walter Berglund find each other early: a pretty jock, focused on the court and a little lost off it, and a stolid budding lawyer, besotted with her and almost burdened by his integrity. They make a family and a life together, and, over time, slowly lose track of each other. Their stories align at times with Big Issues--among them mountaintop removal, war profiteering, and rock'n'roll--and in some ways can't be separated from them, but what you remember most are the characters, whom you grow to love the way families often love each other: not for their charm or goodness, but because they have their reasons, and you know them. --Tom Nissley
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
'Deeper, funnier, sadder and truer than a work of fiction has any right to be' Independent on Sunday 'Head and shoulders above any other book this year: moving, funny and unexpectedly beautiful. I missed it when it was over' Sam Mendes, Observer, Books of the Year 'A cat's cradle of family life, and if the measure of a good book is its afterburn, 'Freedom' is a great book' Kirsty Wark Observer, Books of the Year 'I loved 'Freedom'. His acute observations of emotional faultlines, his dialogue and above all his wry humour are delightful' Antony Beevor, Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year 'Franzen pulls off the extraordinary feat of making the lives of his characters more real to you than your own' David Hare, Guardian, Books of the Year 'No question about it: 'Freedom' swept everything before it in intricately observed, humane, unprejudiced armfuls. There was no novel to touch it in 2010' Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year 'By the end of 'Freedom' you may feel you understand its protagonists better than you know anyone in the world around you' Nicholas Hytner, Evening Standard, Books of the Year 'The novel of the year. Its portrait of a marriage, luminously and wittily drawn against a backdrop of modern America, is as good as literature gets' Sarah Sands, New Statesman, Books of the Year
--This text refers to an alternate
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Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Stuck with it for little pay off,
By
This review is from: Freedom (Hardcover)
What an unsympathetic, unlikeable cast of characters. Given the buzz about this book, I stuck with it even though I was tempted to bail midway, particularly when the book gets heavy into an environmental theme. Just didn't like the characters and found the plot plodded. Typically, I burn through books; this one took me weeks to finish. Now that I've finished it, I feel I've got my freedom back to read something I'll actually enjoy.
51 of 63 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love Grows,
By Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 112,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (#1 HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: Freedom (Hardcover)
"Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved." -- Matthew 24:11-13 (NKJV)Freedom is the best new work of fiction I've read so far in 2010. Freedom looks at the pain, responsibility, and potential involved in doing what appeals to you . . . regardless of the cost to anyone else. It's a worthwhile trip that manages to touch on a wide variety of ways that freedom pulls us in some directions and away from others. There's plenty of food for thought here, parceled out in bite-sized nuggets that you can chew on for weeks to come. I was particularly impressed by the story's narrative structure. As the book opens, you see the Berglund family from the outside-in, the neighbors' view. Very quickly, one set of patterns are disrupted into a totally unexpected direction, drawing you irresistibly into wanting to know what happened. In part the answer is that no one who isn't in a family really knows what goes on in a family. In another part, it's that people keep secrets from one another . . . particularly what they see as their own dark sides that they don't want others to know about. From there, the story richly expands into four narratives, by narrators whose connections to others are rich and hard to grasp . . . even for themselves. It's only by overlaying the narratives that the whole picture begins to emerge. At times, you'll want to shake one character or another into doing something different, but of course you cannot do that with a fictional character any more easily than you can with most real persons. Jonathan Franzen is a well-read author and a talented writer so his narrations dig deep into a variety of literary sources and methods to establish mood, color, imagery, emotion, psychology, physical sensations, and experiences that you'll find seem more than vaguely familiar . . . even when you cannot exactly place them. It's all subtly and humorously done, by an author who loves people and wants the best for them. There's a warm heart underneath all the Sturm und Drang that is what ultimately sets the book apart. I was pleased to see that the book takes seriously such important subjects as marital love, friendship, sexual attraction, depression, sibling rivalries, parental mistakes, social responsibility, and serving one's fellow human. Rather than treating each topic as a single point of light, Mr. Franzen steps back to give you a globe's eye view from both without and from within. It's at once both terrifically subjective and wonderfully objective. Be careful that you don't read any reviews that get into much of the story. You need to be surprised in places for this book to work its full magic on you. Bravo, Mr. Franzen!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't be put off by all those unfavourable reviews on this site!,
By
This review is from: Freedom (Hardcover)
I cannot beleive all those people who thought this book was boring and uninteresting! I thought it was brilliant, gripping and couldn't put it down. I had previously enjoyed The Corrections very much too. Jonanathan Franzen is a brilliant writer and what I admired most here was his emphasis on contemprary themes, all the while interspersing them with a great story and interesting characters. Of course the characters have flaws but what good would a novel be with only perfect people in it?Probably, when future generations of literature students are studying this book in university, they'll endlessly discuss the socio-historic context as much as students in past times have studied the world of Dickens, George Eliot or Emile Zola. I am aware that many readers will jump out of their skins at my comparing Franzen to those authors but anyway, read it and see!
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