Freedom

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Franzen, Jonathan
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Franzen, Jonathan	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Franzen, Jonathan	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Franzen, Jonathan	4-week checkout	Due 04-27-2024

The idyllic lives of civic-minded environmentalists Patty and Walter Berglund come into question when their son moves in with aggressive Republican neighbors, green lawyer Walter takes a job in the coal industry, and go-getter Patty becomes increasingly unstable and enraged.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A Good Read! submitted by markwells on February 13, 2011, 12:42pm For me, the glue that holds this book together is its colorful cast of characters. I'm no expert but the plot seemed slow to develop and sluggish once it did. There may have been one or two too many sidebars and subplots, but I wanted to follow these people around and see what they were going to do or say next, They really jumped off the page. I can't remember the last book I read that had such memorable characters.

unnecessarily long marathon submitted by 21621031390949 on July 29, 2011, 8:56am This is a marathon of a novel that was at least 30% too long. The overall tone is angry, depressing, and very bitter. While the author is adept at satirizing nuances of life in 2010 America (where people use credit cards to buy a pack of gum: "I mean, cash is so yesterday"), he preaches and bemoans and belabors everything. Like my mother at her worst, he says everything three times.

I listened to this BOCD, rather than reading the hard copy book. It was very hard to take the reader's snotty, bitter tone for 25 hours. Perhaps without his whining voice I would have felt better about the book. As it is, I simply feel I slogged through a compulsory reading, pushing to the end in the hopes that something would redeem it. Nothing did.

Liked Corrections better submitted by EJZ on July 23, 2018, 8:30pm It felt pretty similar to The Corrections, but the writing felt forced in sections, and the characters were not nearly as endearing in their flaws. I was never a fan of the couple the entire way through, and while Franzen does manage to break your heart effectively on one or two occasions, the ending falls on its face.

depressing submitted by savannahwhaley42 on August 7, 2023, 11:34am everyone was bad, life is hard? not a fan of this, read it a while ago and think back to the unpleasant experience of reading it sometimes.