Awards
Winner of the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction
Powells.com Staff Pick
Alfred, the patriarch of the Lambert family, is in declining health due to Parkinson's, and Enid wants their adult children to come home for one last Christmas together. The novel focuses on Enid and Alfred's lives in suburban St. Jude, and on each of their three children, Chip, Gary, and Denise, as they prepare for their possible homecomings and face "corrections" in their own lives. It's a multifaceted portrait of American culture, hilarious, scathing, and poignant by turns, centered in a town named for the patron saint of hopeless causes. Dehlia McCobb, Powells.com
"If it can be said that it unwittingly enacts a fine argument against the viability of a certain kind of social novel, it must also be said that it purposively makes a fine case for the vivacity of another kind of book, the novel of character....We are doomed because humans always flow over their targets; their souls are gratuitous and busy, congested with aspiration and desire. This is the dark theme of Franzen's novel, this is its truest touch. All the rest is 'social news' and may be turned off, as it deserves." James Wood, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review)
"The Corrections is a lumpy, strange, singular work, very much of this moment even as it harks back to a kind of American novel long deemed extinct. Its portrayal of American family life sometimes seems cruel and unforgiving, yet the sheer amplitude of its vision implies a kind of sympathy, or at least understanding." Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com (read the entire Salon review)
Synopses & Reviews
From Powells.com:
Jonathan Franzen has an impressive resumé. After being named one
of the best writers under forty by both the New Yorker and Granta,
his third novel went on to win the National Book Award and garner praise
from writers as diverse as Don DeLillo and Pat Conroy. The Corrections
is a huge book, an ambitious, chaotic saga — from Lithuanian financial
markets to academic adultery laws, it contains a vast amount of fascinating
minutia. But the novel is most satisfying in its precisely detailed characters:
the Lambert family, struggling with everything from affairs to dementia,
manages to stay sympathetic, irritating, and contradictory. The New
York Times Book Review reminds us that "Franzen is a writer with old-fashioned
virtues....he creates characters whose emotions reach us even when they
are hidden from the people feeling them." And at heart, The Corrections
is funny, messily realistic, and even tender, despite — or because
of — Franzen's incisive insight into the dynamic of the modern American
family. Jill, Powells.com
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 spectacularly 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 of 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.
Review:
"No one book, of course, can provide everything we want in a novel. But a book as strong as The Corrections seems ruled only by its own self-generated aesthetic: it creates the illusion of giving a complete account of a world, and while we're under its enchantment it temporarily eclipses whatever else we may have read." David Gates, The New York Times Book Review
Review:
"More engaging and readable than other chilly magnum opuses in the same league....Unlike his Big Book peers, [Franzen] wants things tidy — not in the middle, maybe, but at the end. The chaos-theory math wizards of antimatter fiction don't often show such good manners, such politeness, and it's touching to find it here. Not just dazzle — warmth." GQ magazine
Review:
"By turns funny and corrosive, portentous and affecting, The Corrections not only shows us two generations of an American family struggling to make sense of their lives, but also cracks open a window on a sullen country lurching its way toward the millennium." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Review:
"In its complexity, its scrutinizing and utterly unsentimental humanity, and its grasp of the subtle relationships between domestic drama and global events, The Corrections stands in the company of Mann's Buddenbrooks and DeLillo's White Noise. It is a major accomplishment." Michael Cunningham
Review:
"Remarkable....The best comparisons are to David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Don DeLillo's Underworld...but The Corrections has more heart." The Oregonian
Review:
"The last 100 pages of The Corrections is an unforgettably sad, indelibly beautiful piece of literature....[Franzen] is a writer with talent to burn." Newsweek
Review:
"Smart and boisterous and beautifully paced....His rendering [of the autumnal prairie of millennial America] is frighteningly, luminously authentic." Boston Globe
Review:
"Franzen is a writer with old-fashioned virtues: he loves witty wordplay; his command of detail in an enormous range of interests is unassailable; he has a painter's eye for depth and contrast; and he creates characters whose emotions reach us even when they are hidden from the people feeling them." New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice, Best Books of 2001
Review:
"Ferociously detailed, gratifyingly mind-expanding, and daringly complex and unhurried, New Yorker writer Franzen's third and best-yet novel aligns the spectacular dysfunctions of one Midwest family with the explosive malfunctions of society-at-large." Booklist (starred review)
Review:
"What we're asking is whether Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections will become that rare thing, a literary work that everybody's reading? A lot of people are saying yes." Time
Review:
"Jonathan Franzen's novel The Corrections is the brightest, boldest, and most ambitious novel I've read in many years. With this dazzling work, Franzen gives notice that from now on, he is only going to hunt with the big cats." Pat Conroy
Synopsis:
A comic, tragic masterpiece of an American family breaking down in an age of easy fixes, Franzen's third novel brings an old-time America into wild collision with the era of home surveillance and New Economy speculation. Winner of the National Book Award.
Synopsis:
Winner of the National Book AwardAfter 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 spectacularly 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 of 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.
About the Author
Jonathan Franzen is the author of
The Twenty-Seventh City,
Strong Motion, and the essay collection
How to Be Alone. He has been named one of the
Granta 20 Best Novelists under 40 and is a frequent contributor to
The New Yorker and
Harper's. He lives in New York City.
