Freedom: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)
Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter—environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man—she was doing her small part to build a better world.
But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbor," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?
In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.
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Community Reviews
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
562 pages
What’s it about?
This novel centers around Walter and Patty Berglund. Walter and Patty have created a life together, but it is not always easy. Love and marriage are seen with all its flaws and imperfections, along with its many saving graces.
What did it make me think about?
How do some authors tell a story and share such deep truths in the process? I loved "The Corrections" and yet I somehow left this book sitting on my shelf for at least two years. Maybe the 562 pages had something to do with it? What is the matter with me?
I so enjoyed the story of the Berglund's marriage. Mr. Franzen tells us the story of a marriage, but his cast of characters and his insightful social commentary are what makes this novel so special. Walter, and especially Patty, are such complex and quirky people that you cannot fail to be interested in them. The last 512 pages just flew by, and I am so sorry to have finished reading this story.
Should I read it?
You may find yourself thinking, "No Walter!, No Patty!", but you will root for the Berglund's all the way to page 562. This goes on my list of great American novels.
Quote-
"There was, of course, no where better in the world to be than New York City. This fact was the foundation of her family's satisfaction with itself, the platform in which all else could be ridiculed, the collateral of adult sophistication that bought them the right to behave like children."
If you liked this try-
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
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