The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
9 Rating(s)
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The Corrections

Author: Jonathan Franzen

Narrator: Dylan Baker

Abridged: 10 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/01/2001


Synopsis

The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century -- a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. 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, despite clear signs to the contrary, that 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 on 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.
Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, The Corrections brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.

About Dylan Baker

Dylan Baker's films include Happiness, Along Came A Spider, and 13 Days. He starred on the TV series Feds and Murder One. Mr. Baker's theater credits include La Bete (Tony & Drama Desk nominations), Eastern Standard (Theatre World Award), and Not About Heroes (Obie Award).


Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by merri on 2007-06-14 00:14:53

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.

Goodreads review by Kemper on July 22, 2010

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

Goodreads review by Paul on November 12, 2013

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

Goodreads review by Jason on November 10, 2011

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

Goodreads review by Kate on December 29, 2018

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


Quotes

Pat Conroy Jonathan Franzen's novel The Corrections is the brightest, boldest, and most ambitious novel I've read in many years.