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The Corrections: A Novel
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312421274
ISBN: 0312421273
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 576
Publication Date: September 01, 2002
Publisher: Picador
Release Date: August 27, 2002
Studio: Picador
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Editorial Review:
Jonathan Franzen's exhilarating novel The Corrections tells a spellbinding story with sexy comic brio, and evokes a quirky family akin to Anne Tyler's, only bitter. Franzen's great at describing Christmas homecomings gone awry, cruise-ship follies, self-deluded academics, breast-obsessed screenwriters, stodgy old farts and edgy Tribeca bohemians equally at sea in their lives, and the mad, bad, dangerous worlds of the Internet boom and the fissioning post-Soviet East.
All five members of the Lambert family get their due, as everybody's lives swirl out of control. Paterfamilias Alfred is slipping into dementia, even as one of his inventions inspires a pharmaceutical giant to revolutionize treatment of his disease. His stubborn wife, Enid, specializes in denial; so do their kids, each in an idiosyncratic way. Their hepcat son, Chip, lost a college sinecure by seducing a student, and his new career as a screenwriter is in peril. Chip's sister, Denise, is a chic chef perpetually in hot water, romantically speaking; banker brother Gary wonders if his stifling marriage is driving him nuts. We inhabit these troubled minds in turn, sinking into sorrow punctuated by laughter, reveling in Franzen's satirical eye: Gary in recent years had observed, with plate tectonically cumulative anxiety, that population was continuing to flow out of the Midwest and toward the cooler coasts.... Gary wished that all further migration [could] be banned and all Midwesterners encouraged to revert to eating pasty foods and wearing dowdy clothes and playing board games, in order that a strategic national reserve of cluelessness might be maintained, a wilderness of taste which would enable people of privilege, like himself, to feel extremely civilized in perpetuity. Franzen is funny and on the money. This book puts him on the literary map. --Tim Appelo
Winner of the National Book AwardAfter 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 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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Well worth the investment in time
Don't believe the hype about the hype. Brilliantly imagined, extremely well written, and just a pleasure to read.
Rating:  - mmm, not that impressed
After seeing this on best selling lists forever, finally picked it up from my library. Liked the beginning, but it really waned. Made myself finish it since SO many people loved it, but I'm not feeling it.
Rating: - Black Comedy Without the Comedy
Let's take the good points, first:
1. Chip's part of the story. The Corrections is divided (roughly) into four or five parts, one for each member of the Lambert family -- Alfred and Enid (the parents), Chip, Gary, and Denise (their children). The second section, focused on Chip's declining academic and writing career is actually buffo stuff.
The characterization of the rich young undergrad whom Chip beds and spends a wild weekend with is painfully accurate. Even ... Read More
Rating: - Good read
Grand ideas, ambitious and captivating- a novel about a dysfunctional family, and the many contradictions and concessions that family life requires. It kept me absorbed for days.
Rating: - A mixed bag
While Jonathan Franzen obviously has a talent for character development and drama, I was initally put off by what felt like a pretentious writing style. I've seen other reviewers here state that this was part of the story. I'm not sure I agree with that. But if that was his intent - to show the dysfunction of an average, midwestern family vis-a-vis a snobby, psuedo-intellectual narration, then he succeeded on that point.
I ended up putting this book down for a time because it was too ... Read More
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