The Corrections

A Novel

By: Jonathan Franzen

Narrated by: George Guidall

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 specatcularly 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.

Needs editor shears.

Way too long. Way too pointless.
Way too much gratuitous cheap sex.
I didn't finish it. Waste of my time and expectations.

Intense

The reality, that's what I liked! I had family members who were afflicted with Alfreds disease. It was was unbelievably real and George Guidell is marvelous. Insightful and moving. Excellent book.

Fantastic, but Narrator sounds sexist

This is a fantastic book about the American psyche. However, in this version, all of the women's voices are portrayed in the same shrill, grating tone. The effect minimizes the depth of these characters and is annoying.

very close to home

this story was a bit difficult to follow for awhile. the characters didn't connect. the end caused me to cry quite a bit because it was so descripruvely written about a man going through the struggles of Parkinsons. i just lost my father from this disease and it was painful to hear it from the main character's perspective. The children's attitudes really upset me.

The Corrections, Commendable

I first fell in the live with *The Corrections* when it was described to me as a book that deals with the ways each generation over-corrects according to what the previous generation wanted for them. I play with this notion in my writing and I’ve found it to be true in my experience as well. With that initial attraction, and my love for his other novel Freedom, I came to this book with some modest and fair expectations.
First of all, Franzen is a stunning writer. Similar to few others I’ve read--David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Elizabeth Strout—Franzen can shape a brilliant world from the commonest of details. Take the chair where the book opens with Alfred Lambert. The chair is brought to life, not by its physical description, but by the unique psychological bond the elder Lambert has with it. Take, by contrast, the hard steel chair in the assisted living facility where the novel ends with Lambert suffering from Parkinson's and onset Dementia, wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of there without the capacity to explain why.
The heart of the story though, is the story of the three children and the shadow of their mother, Enid. Each child, Chip, Gary, and Denise, whose stories are told in that order, is depicted brilliantly through various sub-plots that make the climactic Christmas gathering a painful disaster, viscerally destroyed through every correction the Gen X’ers made to counteract their upbringing. There are corrections all over the book. The pill Enid takes to avoid feeling shame. The change of Chip’s script to a farce to find an authentic voice. Gary’s instance that his father be sent to a home. Denise’s sympathetic affair with the middle-aged colleague of her father. There are the unspoken corrections that Enid is unable to shame out of her children. And, of course, there is the correction to the economy, something that only affected the upper middle-class midwestern family as an inconvenience, allowing the vicious cycle of corrections to continue in the land of prosperity.
Enid gets the last word. The mother who now, at the age of 75, can finally have the moral footing to correct her scrupulous and stubborn husband whose lost the ability to reason.
This book is excellent and a good one to read if you have the time.