I just finished Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. This novel has received a host of raves, and it won the 2001 National Book Award. While it's always hard to say which work is really the best of any year, I'm thinking that the judges of that prize may have gotten one right that year (and I say that as someone who adores Michael Chabon and really liked The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay which was, I believe, published the same year).
This book is a tremendous piece of story-telling. The characters seem painfully real. The prose is razor sharp. It vividly captures the emotional undercurrents that separate and draw together an extended family as the various family members go through a string of personal crises. It is at times disturbingly realistic. You really do feel you know these people and their pain. But while there is a certain level of grief, the book is also often quite humorous. It's worth checking out.
Posted by armand at August 14, 2004 03:41 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Booksi'd like to note that i was truly blown away by this book as well. franzen can be a little stentorian at times, a little mannered or contrived, but his observations of minutiae are as sharp and entertaining as any i can think of, and the result is a deadpan hilarity that's as unaffected as his prose can be affected.
i also was baffled by how a book so full of sadness can leave one smiling, with a strange warmth about the ending, and not incur any frisson of incredulity in the reader. everything about the book just _works_, and i, too, would consider _the corrections_ and _Kavalier and Clay_ to be more or less on par as equally spectacular efforts.
Posted by: joshua at August 17, 2004 12:39 PM | PERMALINK