Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

Pros: Truly insightful, mercilessly satiric, and endlessly readable

Cons: The O-Factor may still bother some (although I got over it, so you might too)

The Bottom Line: A challenging read that lives up to the hype. That's as good a bottom line as I can think of.

Review: I wonder if you had the same first encounter with "The Corrections" that I had. Weeks of hearing its praises sung by respected reviewers from coast-to-coast. An almost universal concurrence that if this wasn't indeed the Great American Novel, than at...

Pros: Universal themes such as family, pain, celebration, success, divorce and failure

Cons: Long descriptions

The Bottom Line: An interesting book about an average, middle-class American family with all kinds of dirty laundry, fury, humor, division and unhappiness.

Review: If Jonathan Franzen's two previous novels brought him a lot of critical acclaim, without any doubt, The Corrections placed him on the literary map. In fact, he is the well-known and talented author of The Twenty-Seventh City" and Strong...

Pros: Vivid characters and humor punctuates this family's life stories and misguided adventures.

Cons: Descriptive to a tedious degree at times.

The Bottom Line: A good read for the in-tune reader with a love for character portrayal, description and scene-painting.

Review: Alfred and Enid Lambert have three grown children. These children have lives of their own, without a doubt, and sees each other as living the dream much better than the other. Ha!

Just when you think oldest, Gary, has it made with the...

Pros: Extremely well-written, pages turn easily.

Cons: Cynical view of contemporary society.

The Bottom Line: In spite of a somewhat pessimistic view of the world, this novel is well-written and enjoyable.

Review: Jonathan Franzen’s ‘The Corrections’ is a skillfully conceived and adeptly written novel about a family, the Lambert’s, who are navigating the new realities of modern society with mixed success. The patriarch and the matriarch, Alfred and Enid, still ...

Pros: This novel is well worth the time. The language is absolutely exciting!

Cons: At times, it seems overworked and overblown.

The Bottom Line: I recommend this for those who aren't interested in a light read. There aren't many books this well written in spite of its pretentious quality.

Review:




By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Author of “This is the Place.”



In The Corrections, Franzen gets the last laugh. You’re not going to know what I mean by that until you’ve read the last paragraph of this...

Pros: Funny, pungent, and perceptive. More amusing for seniors than younger adults.

Cons: A little bitter for some people and not for the very young.

The Bottom Line: This is a special book for the older reader if they have a sense of humor. It takes some seasoning to enjoy shocking adversity.

Review: I've spent some time considering my attitude toward this book. From a contemporary's perspective of Alfred and Enid, the parents in this dysfunctional family it is a very funny book. No one need be ashamed of belonging to a dysfunctional family, every...

Pros: Smart, funny, literate, accessible

Cons: Uneven, exhausting, too self-conscious

The Bottom Line: Read it and weep: If we really left it to Beaver, is this how far the nuclear family has crumbled? Do the sons of the fathers really know best?

Review:
Let’s start with the fresh legend of The Corrections: author Jonathan Franzen wrote part of the Bible-sized novel while sitting in a room with soundproof walls and double-paned windows. Each day he arrived at the writing room, he would draw...

Pros: Well written passages, drawing vivid visual images.

Cons: Disturbing themes. Certain sections laborious to read.

The Bottom Line: Not literature for the masses. Franzen draws achingly real pictures of a family needing corrections. Contains some disturbing themes and is for adults only.

Review: ~=~ Ch Ch Ch Changes... ~=~

Corrections can mean many things. From the gentle loving guidance of a child to harsh punitive lessons, marking of mistakes on school papers, stock markets taking a dip or plunge, inner voices which urge us...

Pros: Engaging, and skillfully constructed story with memorable characters.

Cons: Entirely too long, Franzen loves to listen to himself write.

The Bottom Line: A remarkably complex and dark novel that is at once a literary achievement to behold and an exhausting effort to read.

Review: Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections is so painstakingly detailed, so meticulously crafted, and absurdly complex that it almost defies analysis. The task of writing such a novel seems so daunting that he must not have known what he had gotten himself into...

Pros: Good strong writing with believable characters and all too convincing family situations.

Cons: A bit long and certainly depressing. This is not carefree pleasure reading!

The Bottom Line: A book about family and how criticism can destroy what might be happier and more contented lives. Discontent and blame illustrate the damage done when love and understanding could prevail.

Review: The Corrections is indeed a powerful novel of family, relationships, disfunction, and discontent. There is also humor, if sometimes, black humor, and there are realistic situations that almost any family can identify with. Is it a good read? Yes...