Synopses & Reviews
Jonathan Franzen's gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.
It's December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless — unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem's sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who's been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.
Jonathan Franzen's novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.
A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen's gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.
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“Franzen's intensely absorbing novel is amusing, excruciating, and at times unexpectedly uplifting — in a word, exquisite." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
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“A sweeping and masterly examination of the shifting culture of early 1970s America, the first in a trilogy...Throughout, Franzen exhibits his remarkable ability to build suspense through fraught interpersonal dynamics. It's irresistible.” Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
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[A] masterful, Tolstoian saga....[A] masterpiece of social realism….Franzen is in rarified peak form. -- Booklist (Starred Review)
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"Franzen is keenly aware that human struggle is defined by understanding and acceptance and that it is generational, ideas he admirably captures here." Library Journal (Starred Review)
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"[Franzen] does not disappoint....[He writes] with penetrating insight delivered through incisive sentences....I can't wait to read what happens next." BookPage (Starred Review)
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“This is peak Franzen, with richly created characters, conflicts and plot...The writing is a marvel.” Rob Merrill, Associated Press
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“[A] superb domestic epic...Franzen's faith in fiction as a means to get at questions of goodness and righteousness is unshakable.” Mark Athitakis, USA Today (Four out of Four Stars)
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“[Crossroads] is carefully wrought, its neatly balanced architecture another clandestine source of its power.” Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker
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[A] sweeping, sumptuous new novel....[Franzen] pays homage to great nineteenth century social realists, from George Eliot to Balzac to Dickens, while gazing unflinchingly to the ills that shape us today.“ Hamilton Cain, Oprah Daily
About the Author
Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels, including The Corrections, Freedom, and Purity, and five works of nonfiction, most recently Farther Away and The End of the End of the Earth, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.