I put off reading ‘Freedom’ the latest book by Jonathan Franzen, because I had failed to finish 'The Corrections.' Once I got started, however, I started to enjoy it. This substantial book describes a marriage which has difficulties. It concentrates on the main protagonists, the wife, Patty, the husband, Walter, the children, mainly Joey and to a lesser extent, Jessica; some extra marital problems.
Franzen does this with a certain amount of humour, even though he is documenting the breakdown of a marriage. This is not a book you read for the plot, even though you want to know what is going to happen next; it’s really a case of getting to know the characters. I thought the autobiographical part, seen through the woman’s eyes was extremely perceptive and contained the sort of truths I would never write in my own fiction. Just too revealing. I also thought that as a man, he got under a woman’s skin in a remarkable manner. However, I felt that the story from the son, Joey’s perspective was really too coarse for me. Yes, it was funny, but just a bit too OTT.
There was some complicated stuff about the organisation that Walter is involved with and a bit of politics, and Franzen made some points about the environment and companies that pretend to be environmentally friendly while ripping everyone off, but I didn’t feel this was the main point of the book.
Towards the end, I got a bit impatient. Franzen started bringing in the relations of both and Walter and telling me things about them I wasn’t really interested in. Why did he come back to these relatives so late in the book, when their first appearances were so long ago, I had forgotten all about them. He was still readable, even then, and then, as we wound our way to the end of the story, I found it completely satisfactory.
I may even return to The Corrections.
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