The Corrections

sometimes i didnt like this book, but most of the times i liked it a lot. it was about a woman whose husband has just retired, but he now has parkinsons disease with a little bit of dementia or alzheimers, and she has to take care of him. she wants her three children to come home for one last xmas... then we switch to chapters in perspective of each of the characters - her husband, her daughter, and her two sons. time jumps around, so we have chapters from when they are young, and now, when the youngest is about 30. they all have such big problems in their lives... it made me feel better to read this book. my grandpa died of alzheimers, which was the main reason i even was interested in this book, but then the trouble people have picking a career, living their lives, finding someone to love. anyways, very good book.

While reading The Corrections I really understood the meaning of ‘schadenfreude’ because I despised almost every character in this book so much that the more miserable their lives got, the more enjoyment I took from it. And when a shotgun was introduced late in the novel, I read the rest of it with......more

JONATHAN FRANZEN'S TOP TEN RULES FOR WRITERS (as given to The Guardian on 20 Feb 2010) with additional commenty comments by me : 1. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator. Hmm, well, maybe. I can't think Hugh Selby had very friendly thoughts when he wrote his brilliant Last Exit to B......more

Franzen’s writing is impeccable. Not only does his understanding of complex, familial relationships fascinate me, but his ability to capture these characters—all five of them, I might add—with such depth...I think that is what really drew me in as a reader. I mean, these are people who are so flawed......more

A friend once told me that Jonathan Franzen has been quoted as saying he deliberately rips off influential late-century American authors such as Pynchon, DeLillo and Roth, but tries to make the prose less difficult, more easily consumed.* Leaving aside for a moment the irony of that statement in ligh......more