Purity

A Novel

By: Jonathan Franzen

Narrated by: Jenna Lamia, Dylan Baker, Robert Petkoff

A magnum opus for our morally complex times from the author of Freedom.

Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother - her only family - is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life.

Enter the Germans. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with The Sunlight Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world - including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn't understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong.

Purity is a grand story of youthful idealism, extreme fidelity, and murder. The author of The Corrections and Freedom has imagined a world of vividly original characters - Californians and East Germans, good parents and bad parents, journalists and leakers - and he follows their intertwining paths through landscapes as contemporary as the omnipresent Internet and as ancient as the war between the sexes. Purity is the most daring and penetrating book yet by one of the major writers of our time.

This audiobook includes a bonus conversation with the author.

©2015 Jonathan Franzen (P)2015 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"In short, the book is a dream for any narrator who is itching to demonstrate his or her acting range, as Jenna Lamia, Dylan Baker, and Robert Petkoff handily do. Their performances are uniformly engaging and engrossing; together, they make the listening time fly by. Anyone weighing the potential return on investment of reading all 587 pages can safely turn the heavy lifting over to them." (AudioFile)

Art that entertains but but does not edify

Clever but not profound. Prurient but not sensual. Sex without love. Love Without sex. Mothers without daughters; daughters without fathers. Obsession without inspiration. Questions with no answers. Answers without epiphanies. Facts devoid of truth. In sum: art that entertains but does not edify.

Classic Franzen

I started this book the day after it was released, after I listened to some lukewarm reviews on NPR and online. I loved The Corrections and Freedom, not an opinion shared by some of my friends.
I really enjoyed this novel. The characters were real, complex and compelling. The mothers were all tremendously flawed. That's OK. Franzen's choice.
One review balked at his character's presentation of feminism. I Find that sort of review self serving to the reviewer.
It is 25 hours of a really good story. Gave me lots to think about
!

Different from the corrections but equal to if not better

I found this story to be more suspenseful than the corrections and perhaps that's why I enjoyed it more. I found it equally engaging and the characters equally vivid and interesting to those in the corrections but perhaps in a somewhat more subtle way. I would definitely recommend it.

Interview with Franzen enjoyable and informative

More story with this book than some of his others.
The excesses portrayed in the relationships are long and detailed and wearing--just as though the reader is experiencing the frustration, predictability themself

Purity, one virtue that you won't find here.

Would you consider the audio edition of Purity to be better than the print version?

I loved the multiple narrators. They added more depth to the book. Reading it I can only hear one voice in my head with the multiple narrators I get more into the story.

What did you like best about this story?

Sex. More importantly, how we deal with sex in society now. What is normal and what is abnormal but how much more integrated it is into the everyday life that it used to be before the sexual revolution.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

It would be difficult to listen to in one sitting since the perspective changes chapter by chapter. You need time to adjust.

Any additional comments?

There are many reveals in this story which make it hard to discuss with someone who hasn't read it already. But it is topical and well worth the read.

Fantastic Story, every narrator was superb

Absolutely loved the book and the narrators. Well worth the credit. Franzen takes a lot of abuse, but you can't deny the dude knows how to tell a moving, thoughtful story.

Franzen Scores

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This is a character driven novel which
does not disappoint. It is a many textured story interwoven and surprising. Fabulous Read.

Thank you Mr Franzen

Not a case of Franzenfreude

You see, women supposedly can't criticize this author's novels without being accused of resentment towards the author. A long story that dates back to 2010: "[Jennifer] Weiner, Jodi Picoult, and other prominent female writers argued that acclaim for Franzen came at the expense of women writers, whose work has historically been ignored by book reviewers—in particular those on staff at The New York Times." I read his first book... I stand Corrected; I tried. I picked up Freedom, I put it down. Seemed I just couldn't do whiny, and didn't want to review and add substance to either side of the debate.

Determined to get one down by this "Great American Novelist," I figured I would do a read along with my superior reading pal Darwin. I texted him this message when I finished: "I have never been so happy to have a book come to an end than I was with this!" And I meant it: even while I was dazzled by Franzen's intelligence that highlighted my own inferiority; the elegant technical structure and his dexterity in steering these detailed threads (each of them their own novella) towards his end goal; his ability to keep his clutches tightened around my throat when I wanted nothing more than to just to get away.

Regardless of the oodles of talent Franzen has been blessed with and/or developed, I mostly disliked this very good book. My general dissatisfaction -- a few degrees short of hostility -- is not because of the gratuitous onanism; I read Portnoy's Complaint, loved Suttree with the watermelon violator (though I do feel the need to throw in a foul flag here and issue a warning to readers). It is because of his gross misrepresentation of women across the board, and from what I've read elsewhere, not just with this book. Now don't go pegging me an ultra feminist; I haven't burned a bra and I shave under my arms, and I have never stamped the anti-fem label on anything, but I don't like when my gender is made to look like the doors of mental institutions have sprung wide, spitting from their maws nothing but XX chromosome fruitcakes. Right now, I dislike him, I think I even dislike his mocking, misogynist face!

I can't help myself from wondering, why should it be any more acceptable to continually generalize women this way (or men) than it is to write that all white people can't dance, that all black Americans like chicken and waffles, that all Mexicans hate Donald Trump? -- in my mind, it is offensive, demeaning, and wrong. How far do we broaden the parameters of the literary-tactic-by-a-literary-superstar pass? Isn't a blatant and morally disparaging generalization a blatant and morally disparaging generalization -- hiding behind artistic expression to hurl boulders... ah, what do I know? Maybe Franzen's portrayal of women is nothing more than Sam Tanenhaus' statement: "Franzen has an “otherworldly feel for female characters.” [The New Republic]. I hope Mr. T is not offended by me saying his minimization shows his "vast male dullness or sensitivity of a fence post -- which may or may not be gender related, I have to add to be fair. Because I wouldn't want to assume that all men are like [him]." (Chosen from the words of Patricia Cornwell; The Body Farm.)

I won't deny Franzen's talent. If I could be just pragmatic after reading this instead of embarrassed to be a female, I could recommend. My XX chromosome deleted the fourth *. Franzen was too visible in this novel, too aware of his own intellectual power just beneath the nearly perfect style. I felt like he was mocking me as a reader with his low rung "otherworldly" portrayals juxtaposed with his clever insights into society, as if he was challenging me to fight passed the insults purposely flung, to grab the prize. (Darwin8U-XY gave the perfect example with Andy Kaufman analogy.)

What are those lyrics?: "I hate myself for loving you?" "I love myself for hating you"...Right now I seem to be a little confused.

Terrific!

If you could sum up Purity in three words, what would they be?

Fabulous wonderful book

What other book might you compare Purity to and why?

Don't know and why would I?

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

If you could take any character from Purity out to dinner, who would it be and why?

Sorry...dumb question

Any additional comments?

I just bought purity on the day it was released here on audible. Someone gave the overall rating of two stars. How do you do that when it just got released today?? Totally unfair so I am countering that false rating with a good rating!

Wonderful

I am a huge Jonathan Franzen fan. Since he takes his time with his books we often have a long wait between new novels or anthologies. Purity is no exception. It was well worth the wait for me a wonderful story spanning not only the globe but time as well. This is something I believe Franzen does extremely well. These characters are extraordinary and reminder me as I believe they should of humanity. This story can be exhilarating and depressing at the same time but I didn't want it to end.