Freedom

A Novel

By: Jonathan Franzen

Narrated by: David LeDoux

From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections, a darkly comedic novel about family.

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 intensely realized 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.

©2010 Jonathan Franzen (P)2010 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"The Great American Novel." ( Esquire)

"It’s refreshing to see a novelist who wants to engage the questions of our time in the tradition of 20th-century greats like John Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis . . . [This] is a book you’ll still be thinking about long after you’ve finished reading it." (Patrick Condon, Associated Press)

“Writing in prose that is at once visceral and lapidary, Mr. Franzen shows us how his characters strive to navigate a world of technological gadgetry and ever-shifting mores, how they struggle to balance the equation between their expectations of life and dull reality, their political ideals and mercenary personal urges. He proves himself as adept at adolescent comedy as he is at grown-up tragedy; as skilled at holding a mirror to the world his people inhabit day by dreary day as he is at limning their messy inner lives . . . Mr. Franzen has written his most deeply felt novel yet—a novel that turns out to be both a compelling biography of a dysfunctional family and an indelible portrait of our times." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

Perfection

Franzen peels back the the American psyche with the same empathy for flaws as Updike and all of the pathos of Roth. Each character is at war with themselves in a battle to be the excessive American role model. The conflicts are both rich and subtle and every word is like a scalpel. This is a story for the ages.

Not as good as The Corrections

Like the rest of the world, I was very much looking forward to the release of Jonathan Franzen's new novel FREEDOM. In one sense, I was not disappointed, and Franzen continues to prove his writing prowess is no fluke. FREEDOM is chock full of the crazy family dysfunctionality that we grew to love in THE CORRECTIONS, actually a good bit more of it. And that might be the slight problem with this book - too much of it. When sometimes less is more, FREEDOM heaps on nutcase after nutcase.

The characters in this book are very believable and we all know and/or are related to them. We just prefer not to know them too well. Still, I enjoyed this book a lot and would recommend it, but not quite at highly as Franzen's previous and best book.

A Muddled Story about Jerks

This writer tries too hard to create serious "literature", with significant themes but ends up with a true paucity of entertainment value. The author slowly takes each character's virtues and turns them into flaws while simultaneously showing they DO have a good side. (Writing 101- "no cardboard characters allowed in "literature" so as to qualify as "good writing".)
However... there is no one to "root for" ultimately or rather there is and then everyone is shot down by their obsession with their their own values. (It didn't have to be this way... I didn't hate Holden Caufield for his feelings.)
Intelligent people already "get" that too many people are obsessed with their personal "freedoms" allowing us to wreck each others relationships and/or our environment in the name of our "freedom". Oh well. I suppose it *needed* to be written. Trust me... now you know it's"out there" you don't NEED to trudge through the mire of characters and story that make up this ostensibly "significant" book. I pity the poor student who gets this book stuck on their reading list for an American Literature class. Perhaps it will lead to lively class discussions about what makes a person turn into a jerk.

Get past the first chapter - and the reader

This book is, of course, fantastic. That said, I nearly gave up after listening to the lackluster first section and my general annoyance with the style and tone of the reader. However, by the middle of the initial "autobiography" section I was fully hooked. I literally remember the moment in the that I couldn't stop listening!

It strikes me how many other reviewers are negative by reason of "not liking" many of the characters. This seems to completely irrelevant to the enjoyment of this narrative for me. The book, and in particular the reading, are not without serious flaws but neither are we as a species or the time we live in.

a bit much

I am no prude, but the the amount of graphic sex was more than I needed. The story was wonderful and it made me think of political ideals, conservation and how a person is affected by all experiences in their lives. The characters were well developed and changed before my eyes. I enjoyed the book. I didn't think it dragged at all.

great listening!!

Loved this book!! Page turner!! Did not want to turn off my player. The author pulled you in to the characters lives and made you want to know them and know more about them. Very interesting plot. Followed these characters through their lives, through their trials and tribulations....Very much enjoyed.

Freedom to find fault in everything

The book is engaging, I couldn't stop listening, but it leaves me with a feeling that the author believes that everything and everyone is false. Every character, and the narrator, thrives on contempt or self loathing. A great book for cynics.

The voice performance, and it is a performance, is excellent.

Excellent!

While I enjoyed Jonathan Frazen's earlier work, I wish he had had a more forceful editor. While there are a few rambling sections, this book was a much better read. The characters are compelling. Their stories interesting. The complex structure of the book was actually very easy to follow. This was a truly enjoyable book and worth all the hours.

Missed the point

Although I heard the entire book and did find many part interesting I think I missed the point of the book - assuming there was one. I don't think I would recommend this to any of my friends unless they were desperate for an audible.

Freedom, a truly American concept

I read and listened to this book. Franzen clearly points out how ethnocentric Americans truly are. We have the freedom to criticize, denigrate, choose, decline, and yet somehow the blame is not equal to the responsibility. Sure, we made the decision, but it was because our mommy didn't love us enough, I daddy held us too tight, our classmate told us we had buck teeth! Franzen points all of this out in an amusing, entertaining, and delightful way. Thanks Franzen for this masterpiece of American Life.