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Strong Motion

3.48 of 5 stars 3.48 · rating details · 1,927 ratings · 192 reviews

Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.

528 pages

Published (first published January 1992)

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Apr 04, 2008 Ashley rated it 5 of 5 stars

I remember being seduced to the point of debility by The Corrections (blowing off social outings I was actually looking forward to; missing the Sporanos), which I still can't get over. Strong Motion just confirms that I have a real weakness for Franzen's writing, and also that in my mind he is a genius. Nobody's characters come alive for me the way his do. He just bloody nails it. People are so weird--"ordinary people"--there's no such thing. Everybody is so weird and their ridiculous quirks and...more

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Jul 20, 2008 Miriam rated it 5 of 5 stars

I finally made my way through this vast, amazing epic of a book. I know that I often say that I loved books here. But this one is different, for one thing, it convinced me that Jonathan Franzen is a prescient genius (something I was decidedly not in agreement with before I picked this up). The writing is so precise and dense, yet compelling and readable at the same time. The issues he tackles are huge (coming of age after college, love, commitment, the relationships between parents and their adu...more

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Oct 06, 2007 Jen Padgett Bohle rated it 3 of 5 stars

First, a caveat: Strong Motion is not The Corrections. It does not deliver the scintillating prose, caustic wit, and epic scope of Franzen's National Book Award winning later novel. It's an eccentric and lengthy book that, for better or worse, dons a variety of identities: suspense, romance, family melodrama, didactic political novel, bildungsroman, perhaps more. There are subplots and mere meanderings, but Franzen ties them all into the relationship between Louis Holland and Renee Seitchek, and...more First, a caveat: Strong Motion is not The Corrections. It does not deliver the scintillating prose, caustic wit, and epic scope of Franzen's National Book Award winning later novel. It's an eccentric and lengthy book that, for better or worse, dons a variety of identities: suspense, romance, family melodrama, didactic political novel, bildungsroman, perhaps more. There are subplots and mere meanderings, but Franzen ties them all into the relationship between Louis Holland and Renee Seitchek, and especially Renee's role as a Harvard seismologist examining earthquakes that have recently disturbed the Boston area. Unwittingly, Renee manages to become involved in abortion protests, thus adding another element to Franzen's agenda, er, plot. The varying subplots of the novel would've been handled deftly, but there are simply too many coincidences that are just too convenient for the plot.

Strong Motion does, however, exhibit traces of brilliance, particularly in the characterization of Renee Seitchek, a 30 year old self-conscious seismologist who falls in love with the novel's 23 year old protagonist, Louis Holland. Franzen's attention to the nuances of Renee's struggle for identity are brilliant, as Renee ruminates on everything from egotistical and insular women who join "the sorority of child bearers" to being a "boring scientist who lives in a computer room but considers herself less boring than others like her because ten years ago she went to Clash concerts". Franzen certainly highlights the finer points of the spectrum of femininity.

It is with Louis, Franzen's austere protagonist, that the problem first begins. I cannot bring myself to like him. At all. He's a spineless, masochistic ham radio buff fluent in French. He's smart, occasionally witty, and has a hipster's palate for music (revealed in postcoital bliss as he questions Renee about her music habits: "Lou Reed? Roxy Music? Waitresses? XTC? The Banshees? Early Bowie? Warren Zevon?")
Franzen has furnished him with the right amount of quirks, but Louis simply doesn't hold the novel together. He seems to float through it, swaying where Franzen's well-thought out plot diagram takes him.

There are other problems, too. This isn't exactly experimental, avant-garde fiction Franzen is writing, and yet the omniscient narrator decides to peer into the life of a raccoon for much of chapter 11. Admittedly, sometimes the veering of the narrator is humorous, but in chapter 13 readers get a brief history of the founding of America, complete with Jonh Winthrop and archane Elizabethan spellings. It appears that this is an attempt to add a more epic dimension to the novel, and a playful and pedantic use of English before the days of standardization.

The novel is not an epic, though it tries. Clearly, Franzen has a story with immediacy and scope that spans the range of American lives, particularly in the late 80s and early 90s at the dawn of abortion clinic bombings, the reawakening and strengthening of Christian fundamentalism, and the emergence of a more outspoken environmentalism coupled with questions of corporate responsibility. Franzen includes a Broadway dossier of characters with whom we can sing along for a few chapters, but ultimately, the characterization of these peripheral figures is stock. (Korean immigrant, vacuous Harvard MBAs, lecherous old man, Marxist professor, southern antiabortion minister) and Franzen quickly ends their stories with a sentence here and there in the whirring landfill that constitutes the last few pages.

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Apr 26, 2013 Paula rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A lot of things get shaken up in Jonathan Franzen’s Strong Motion. Earthquakes figure prominently, though the seismic shifts are not of the apocalyptic variety. Instead, you find the unsettling tremors that do not seem to do much damage but nevertheless also bring consequences with them. And, of course, the lives portrayed in the book do mirror nature, their inner lives and identities as shaken as their physical forms are.

Much of the novel revolves around the Holland family: siblings Louis and E...more A lot of things get shaken up in Jonathan Franzen’s Strong Motion. Earthquakes figure prominently, though the seismic shifts are not of the apocalyptic variety. Instead, you find the unsettling tremors that do not seem to do much damage but nevertheless also bring consequences with them. And, of course, the lives portrayed in the book do mirror nature, their inner lives and identities as shaken as their physical forms are.

Much of the novel revolves around the Holland family: siblings Louis and Eileen, mother Melanie, father Bob. It is, perhaps, a typically American dysfunctional family. Money-obsessed Melanie gives in to Eileen and alienates Louis, causing friction and raised voices. Bob, a professor from another time (60s Marxist, with a tinge of hippie), doesn’t get too involved. Eileen and Louis have an uneasy relationship, marked by sibling jealousies and guilt, and neither are well-informed about (or much interested in) the life of the other.

In Boston, Eileen and Louis both wind up at some distance from their Midwestern roots: Eileen is getting an MBA, while Louis toils for a small radio station. Eileen has a boyfriend, Peter, whose father is an executive for Sweeting-Aldren – a company that plays a prominent part in the book as well.

The Hollands are brought back together on the East Coast by an earthquake. It is a minor one, but there is one fatality near Boston: a relative who stood between Melanie and a huge inheritance (possibly over twenty million dollars) – that, incidentally, came from a Sweeting-Aldren investment. At the earthquake site Louis meets a Harvard seismologist, Renee. They fall in love. Complications arise, and the earth continues to shake.

Strong Motion shudders along. There are digressions galore – on business, the changing face of settled Massachusetts, abortion, waste disposal, consumerism, and much else. Some are major, some are minor. Some are relevant, some are just little (or big) show-pieces for Franzen to strut his stuff. Few are really well integrated into the flow of the story.

Characters suddenly come to the fore (as does, at one point, a raccoon), and Franzen delves deep into their pasts and presents, only to leave them somewhere on the side of the narrative again.

Franzen seems to go to great pains not to allow the story to move forward smoothly, building on itself – at least not until he gets fairly deep into the book, where he fortunately can’t stop himself and, despite throwing a few spanners into the works, gets a fair amount of momentum going. The novel eventually works itself up into a long-winded but fast-paced story – one that, with some effort, can actually hold your interest. It takes a while to get there, but the pay-off isn’t bad.

It’s an eccentric and lengthy book that, for better or worse, dons a variety of identities: suspense, romance, family melodrama, didactic political novel, bildungsroman, perhaps more. There are subplots and mere meanderings, and despite Franzen’s attempts to tie them all into the relationship between Louis Holland and Renee Seitchek, it’s just all too tediously wordy, and digressive. Unwittingly, Renee manages to become involved in abortion protests, thus adding another element to Franzen’s agenda, err, plot. I would say that the varying subplots of the novel would’ve been handled deftly, but there are simply too many coincidences that are just too convenient for the plot.

Other than that, the odd love story of Louis and Renee is unsatisfying. While it comes together quite well at the end, there are some bumps and hitches along the way that suggest that these characters have much deeper issues than the ones Franzen gets at.

...

Read my full review at: http://tonguesophistries.wordpress.co...(less)

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Sep 02, 2012 Sophie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Loved this book. Except for the lingering metaphor for cars as shoes that kept popping up. That was a little forced.

"When Louis pointed out that he'd reserved the car a week earlier, she became furious with him, the way a person gets with an inanimate object that she keeps dropping and mishandling."

"For the rest of the evening Louis sat in various chairs and Eileen orbited. A plate of food was something towards which she showed no particular sense of responsibility; she left the table and came...more

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Nov 18, 2011 Johann Guenther rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

FRANZEN, Jonathan: „Schweres Beben“, Hamburg 2010
In Amerika ist vieles größer. So auch Romane. Fast 700 Paperbackseiten sind hier vollgedruckt. Ein ausholender Stil, der aber Spaß macht beim Lesen. Schöne und ausführliche Formulierungen, die man sich auf der Zunge zergehen lassen kann. Viele würde ich gerne zitieren, aber das soll jeder selbst lesen. Passagen wie „Die Englischlehrerin der höheren Klassen … hatte die Geheimnisse der Aussprache weiterzugeben versucht, als sprängen sie wie Bazillen...more FRANZEN, Jonathan: „Schweres Beben“, Hamburg 2010
In Amerika ist vieles größer. So auch Romane. Fast 700 Paperbackseiten sind hier vollgedruckt. Ein ausholender Stil, der aber Spaß macht beim Lesen. Schöne und ausführliche Formulierungen, die man sich auf der Zunge zergehen lassen kann. Viele würde ich gerne zitieren, aber das soll jeder selbst lesen. Passagen wie „Die Englischlehrerin der höheren Klassen … hatte die Geheimnisse der Aussprache weiterzugeben versucht, als sprängen sie wie Bazillen über, und dass ihre Schüler über ein starkes Immunsystem verfügen, stieß bei ihr auf eigentümlich taube Ohren.“ (Seite 321) oder „Über Nahant standen Düsenflugzeuge ohne erkennbare Bewegung am graublauen Firmament, dem ihre Triebwerke neues Grau hinzufügten.“ (Seite 259) Der Umfang des Buches ergibt sich aus ausufernden Formulierungen wie dieser: „Melanie konnte ihre Stimme wie auf Knopfdruck sanft klingen lassen. Sie hörte sich an wie ein Bächlein im Wiesengrund, das durch Schatten und Sonne plätschert und unter Weiden Tümpel bildet – einer jener klaren Bäche, aus denen man Wasser schöpfen und trinken will, ohne einen Gedanken an die Hirschkadaver und die Viehweiden zu verschwenden, die ihn weiter oben vielleicht verschmutzten.“ (Seite 357/358)
Eingebettet in eine Familiengeschichte, in der die Mutter der Familie durch den Tod ihrer eigenen Mutter reiche Erbin wird, erfährt man viel über Seismologie. Die Großmutter kam bei einem Erdbeben um. Eine junge Forscherin vermutet tiefe Erdbohrungen eines Chemiekonzerns, in den Abwässer geleitet werde, die wiederum zu regelmäßigen Erdbeben führen. Der Sohn der Erbin verliebt sich in die Forscherin und verlässt sie wegen einer jüngeren Freundin. Als die Forscherin nach einer Abtreibung niedergeschossen wird kümmert er sich um sie und sie kommen wieder zusammen.
Mehrere Themen kreuzen das Buch: Seismologie, Abtreibungsgegner, Firmengeschichte eines Chemiekonzern, Machenschaften der Industrie und ein Familiendrama.
Beim Lesen solcher übersetzten Werke habe ich immer das Gefühl nicht den wirklichen Autor zu spüren. Da ist etwas dazwischen: der Übersetzer und vieles geht verloren….
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Aug 25, 2011 Ruth Schofield marked it as to-read

Review off listverse

First Sentence: “Sometimes when people asked Eileen Holland if she had any brothers or sisters, she had to think for a moment.”

Another second novel. As always Franzen’s scope is immense, and his talent is clear on every page. If Palanuick is the very best writer, sentence to sentence, then Franzen is clearly the best living novelist. This story involves one Louis Holland, and a Harvard seismologist named Dr. Reneé Seitchek, and it revolves around abortion activists, big corpo...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Jennifer Glass added it · review of another edition

Probably the only novel out there about induced seisimicity! I enjoyed this book, though it did drag on too long, but I’m not sure it would be very readable for non-geologists. I wonder if Franzen has a previous career in geophysics? The problem with the novel was how unlikeable just about every character was. Readers never really get to know the main character, Louis, a moody, depressed college grad looking for work in Boston. He is jealous of his sister, Eileen and the money she receives from...more

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May 23, 2011 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved The Corrections and Freedom and decided to peruse the back-catalog. I was expecting this to be somewhat uneven by comparison, full of Franzen finding his voice, missing the occasional note, and so on. But I was pleasantly surprised (though I still haven't gotten to 27th City...)

The book isn't perfect. If I could, I'd give it a 4.5. But I enjoyed it too much to demote it to a 4.

There's something about the way Franzen plays with fate and choice that I think may be at the center of what's...more I loved The Corrections and Freedom and decided to peruse the back-catalog. I was expecting this to be somewhat uneven by comparison, full of Franzen finding his voice, missing the occasional note, and so on. But I was pleasantly surprised (though I still haven't gotten to 27th City...)

The book isn't perfect. If I could, I'd give it a 4.5. But I enjoyed it too much to demote it to a 4.

There's something about the way Franzen plays with fate and choice that I think may be at the center of what's so haunting about his emotional palate. He makes the creases of relationships seem like tracks from which characters can't escape until they crash into eachother. But he also has an existential approach to how characters feel about each other, particularly in intimate situations. They keep vacillating from one extreme to another and don't really know what their true selves feel because they don't have a single true opinion to unify their confused and contradictory emotions. Louis loves Renee, then he's disgusted by her, then he find the whole arrangement absurd. He's driven toward, away, and so on beyond his control. Yet somehow these two work perfectly well together. This theme is made most explicit in Freedom, but is alive and central in all his books.

The parts lacking a little something tend to follow a theme from his other books -- in general, the female characters aren't all fully developed. Lauren is somewhat flat, begging comparison to the son's love interest in Freedom. She has an opaque personality, puppy-like subservience, and manages to make Louis love her for reasons the reader never quite gets. That's sort of the point. But you wonder whether that reflects more about the character, the author's understanding of her, or his disposition toward love in the first place. You also understand that Melanie is materialistic, and you meet her parents, but you don't really ever get her personal back-story. And you never find out about her relationship with Bob before things started falling apart. Her dad is investigated through Bob. So you meet them mid-fall but miss the context. This is particularly interesting here because Renee is such a focal character and her identity is all bound up in woman-ness, which Franzen treats quite well (as far as I can tell...).

Long story short, you should read this book. (less)

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Jun 22, 2009 Adam rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this after reading The Corrections at least three times and fully assumed at first that it was Franzen's latest (or I guess hoped that he had published something recently) and ended up being somewhat disappointed until I checked the copyright date and found that it preceded The Corrections (yes, I'll continually reference this book as it is definitely one of my top ten (and probably top five although I don't know if I'm ready for that level of commitment without some serious pondering) an...more

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Jan 14, 2013 Andy Quan rated it 4 of 5 stars

In Jonathan Franzen’s 1992 novel, ‘Strong Motion’, we see the prodigious talent that would bring him worldwide fame with ‘The Corrections’ and the more recent ‘Freedom’.

I enjoy reading earlier novels of authors who I’ve discovered when they’re more famous: you see where they’ve come from, what techniques they use that will be repeated, and how something that is good or even great becomes extraordinary.

In ‘Strong Motion’, Franzen displays his formidable intellect and how he uses it to explore,...more

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Oct 18, 2012 Corey rated it 3 of 5 stars

A quick blurb or a rant?

We meet again, Mr. Franzen. Strong Motion isn’t worth three stars, but it isn’t really worth two. I’ll settle with giving it an impossible 2.5 out of 5. In typical Franzen fashion, there are few untouched socio-political issues. Published in 1992, the book wrestles with evangelical Christianity, abortion, environmental terrorism, feminism (or for Franzen, misogyny), and corporate greed.
A summary reads: Louis Holland moves to Boston to take a dead-end, minimum wage job...more A quick blurb or a rant?

We meet again, Mr. Franzen. Strong Motion isn’t worth three stars, but it isn’t really worth two. I’ll settle with giving it an impossible 2.5 out of 5. In typical Franzen fashion, there are few untouched socio-political issues. Published in 1992, the book wrestles with evangelical Christianity, abortion, environmental terrorism, feminism (or for Franzen, misogyny), and corporate greed.
A summary reads: Louis Holland moves to Boston to take a dead-end, minimum wage job at a local radio station. Soon thereafter, a small and unexplained earthquake kills his (unknown) step-grandmother. Melanie Holland, Louis’s mother, inherits her decadent estate and $22 million dollars to boot. Eileen, Louis’s sister, also lives in the greater Boston area. Her relationship with Louis is at best strained. Eileen lives with her boyfriend, Peter. His dad works for a heinous chemical manufacturing company, whose been pumping toxins deep below the earth’s surface. Harvard seismologist, Renee Seitchek, believes the underground toxins are responsible for the earthquake that killed Louis’s step-grandmother and a number of others in and around the city. Renee and Louis fall for each-other, but Louis unfaithfully maintains infidelity in the continuation of an undergraduate university affair. Elsewhere, the Holland family’s fiscal inheritance threatens to further divide the family. Who gets the money? Louis? Eileen? The almost forgotten dad, Bob- a nostalgic, pot-smoking, Marxist history professor at Northwestern? Meandering through romance, corruption and greed, the story explodes in a final act of retribution and a final earthquake.
Franzen has an uncanny ability to perfectly capture the nuance of intimate relationships. All of his novels do this through telling stories that revolve around the death of the American dream. Strong Motion is no different. However, the overtly physical nature of the novel has me reeling. The pages are plagued with abhorrent sex scenes, used tampons and questionable relationships between lovers. I detest every single character. I often asked is Franzen a misogynist. Well, after some brief research, it seems Franzen does in fact have a ‘female problem’. In a jibe at Edith Wharton, Franzen argued Edith and Teddy Wharton’s “ensuing twenty-eight years of marriage were almost entirely sexless was perhaps less a function of her looks than of her sexual ignorance” (Franzen and Oprah Winfrey / AP). He continued, “[Wharton] did have one potentially redeeming disadvantage: she wasn’t pretty”. Apparently, his only concern is appearance and not Wharton’s incredible and invigorating fiction. The jokes on you Mr. Franzen, Wharton for the win, always. (less)

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Mar 13, 2012 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars

Now, in rating this book, I must admit I have to refer to a conversation had with a friend earlier in the day... This one is not really worth as little as 4 stars, but neither is it really worth 5 stars. Strong Motion is a difficult book from a sometimes difficult author whom I just happen to love. It grapples with some of the great issues plaguing the United States in the nineties and on into the noughties (I hate that word!) - environment, evangelical Christianity, abortion, feminism and corpo...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Lobstergirl rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Francis Younghusband

Shelves: fiction

In Strong Motion, Franzen's second novel, new college graduate Louis Holland moves to Boston to work a minimum wage job at a radio station. An earthquake kills his step-grandmother, his mother inherits her $22 million estate, and Louis has a conflicted relationship with his older sister Eileen, who is very mean. Eileen's boyfriend's father works for an evil chemicals manufacturing company who has been pumping toxic waste deep into the earth, which a Harvard seismologist named Renee believes is c...more In Strong Motion, Franzen's second novel, new college graduate Louis Holland moves to Boston to work a minimum wage job at a radio station. An earthquake kills his step-grandmother, his mother inherits her $22 million estate, and Louis has a conflicted relationship with his older sister Eileen, who is very mean. Eileen's boyfriend's father works for an evil chemicals manufacturing company who has been pumping toxic waste deep into the earth, which a Harvard seismologist named Renee believes is causing earthquakes in the Boston area. Louis falls in love with Renee, but maintains a crush he had during college; Mrs. Holland's new inheritance causes lots of familial problems, partly because she's inherited a big chunk of the stock of the chemicals company, and because Eileen is very greedy. The plot accelerates with a final earthquake, and corporate malfeasors wishing to do Renee grave harm.

Grading on writerly talent alone, this would be a 4-star read. Franzen crafts some of the most deft and comical sentences in contemporary fiction, perfectly capturing moods, people, and relationships.

Louis's father, with his academic's respect for lecterns, had already taken a seat.

She looked up at him beseechingly, leaning forward, seeming to want to pour her breasts out at his feet.

He unhooked her bra and freed her breasts, those female things that it had seemed, tonight, that he had never seen before. They were soft and animate little scones. (These are different breasts from the prior example.)

In another scene revolving around breasts, Eileen and her boyfriend Peter are vacationing on the Côte d'Azur and Eileen is debating whether to take off her bikini top. This scene wonderfully expresses volumes about Eileen's idiocy and self-absorption. Franzen is also capable of writing pages and pages of seemingly effortless and fairly ordinary prose, allowing you to float through them without troubling yourself with the labor that went into them. He writes brilliantly about human relationships and dysfunctional families, here in his second novel as well as in The Corrections and Freedom. A flashback Renee has about her mother's old but chic wardrobe, which is being donated to charity, and which Renee desperately wants but her mother refuses to give her, says absolutely everything about their relationship (in the way that Patty's mother not attending Patty's basketball games in Freedom said everything about theirs). He's a preternaturally astute observer of both the natural and man-made environment:

Her apartment was on the eighth floor of a modern high-rise, a tower of concrete that loomed above the ambient brick and clapboard like a thing that had failed to erode...

But there's also a squalor, sometimes emotional, sometimes physical, in his writing, that makes me squeamish. It makes me want to go read Jane Austen or Edith Wharton, novels without acne, used tampons, or deeply repugnant sex scenes. I'm overemphasizing the physicality here because it's hard to explain the emotional squalor; it's a way he has of writing very nakedly and explicitly about characters' failings. It contributes to my inability to actually have strong positive feelings for any of the characters in Strong Motion, with the possible exception of Bob Holland, Louis's father, who seems like he might be the lone sane and emotionally stable person.

If I had my druthers novelists wouldn't write any dialogue about characters' favorite, or most despised, bands. There's a discussion between Louis and Renee about music that goes on for pages and made me feel unpleasantly trapped in the minds of 20-somethings in the early 90s. The novel, over 500 pages, is about 20% too long.

Franzen always brings sociopolitical issues into his novels. In integrating these storylines, and in making them seem truly important to the novels, he is consistently less successful. Freedom covered disappearing warblers, the protection of avian habitats, and overpopulation. Here it's industrial/corporate malfeasance and the anti-abortion movement (the latter an unnecessary and distracting subplot). His sociopolitical storylines bring the books down a notch, aligning him with a lower-caste writer like Tom Wolfe, whose novels strive to capture some Zeitgeist more than to delve deep into the complexity of humans.(less)

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Jul 12, 2011 Jodie added it

Shelves: 2011, maybe-later

I would like to be able to give you a smashing review of this book but I can’t, not because it wasn’t great but because it has simply vanished from my life over a week ago and I don’t know how good or terrible it was. How? I simply don’t know, in fact it is like I have been living in some parallel universe for the last 10 days. I have looked everywhere, everywhere! All the usual suspects have been searched. I tend to carry whatever book I am reading with me regardless of where I am going. I don’...more I would like to be able to give you a smashing review of this book but I can’t, not because it wasn’t great but because it has simply vanished from my life over a week ago and I don’t know how good or terrible it was. How? I simply don’t know, in fact it is like I have been living in some parallel universe for the last 10 days. I have looked everywhere, everywhere! All the usual suspects have been searched. I tend to carry whatever book I am reading with me regardless of where I am going. I don’t know why, it is like a security blanket that I never get time to use outside of my own home so it is a totally pointless exercise, yet I persist. I had the book on my bedside table, now I don’t. Is it in the Sherpa (my affectionate name for my ridiculously large hand bag) no, car, no, favourite coffee shop, no, buried by my curious beagle, no (well not in her usual burial ground anyway, I did find a hair brush and a packet of rice crackers that have blown up to the size of a football). It is simply gone and the whole time I am looking for the blasted book I am so distracted by its vanishing that I cannot start another. I sit on the couch watching lame TV shows (except Master Chef, god I love that show) bored out of my mind because I have nothing to read (and where are all the good TV writers anyway?).

In a fit of inspiration I decide to clean my windows. It is a brilliant crisp winter day, the sun will feel magnificent beating down on my back as I wash the windows in warm soapy water. I am up, I am in to it. Buckets are filled, windows are soaped, and I feel good. I lose concentration; step down off my ladder forgetting the bottom step and land hideously on the side of my ankle, POP; then swearing; then tears welling; then limping inside to take off my shoe and inspect the damage. Not good I muse to myself and it hurts like a mofo (but at least it was the last window and the rest sparkle brilliantly). It turns out to be just a bad sprain, nothing that codeine doesn’t take the edge off for the first two days. Looking like a bewildered possum with a limp, my husband runs me a bath and in I get, leg elevated and a fresh new book to read. I settle in, relieved to read a book again, and turn the pages of A Discovery of Witches. Sweet relief, this will take all my attention, I forget about my aching foot and read away. Twenty minutes later my husband wakes me up, the water is tepid and my brand new book with only 30 pages read is in the bottom of the bath. I blame the codeine and that bloody lost book.
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Aug 11, 2010 Susan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really, really loved this book, which is probably an understatement. For the first time, in a while, a writer verging on genius has managed to keep my attention and will for longer than say 5-10 minutes. This novel was written in 1992, before his first blockbuster novel The Corrections (which I have not read yet, surprisingly, and I am glad). I think I was so engaged because, in 1992, I was 23-24 years old myself, like Louis. So, of course, I related to him in many ways, even though we don't s...more

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Jun 04, 2011 Yulia rated it 3 of 5 stars

The writing in Strong Motion isn't as clean as in his later two novels, especially in the first third, where I felt like this was a book by Jonathan Franzen's less talented sibling, but thankfully the overwritten passages subsided and I was able to appreciate the rest of the novel.

It's about a 23-year-old Chicagoan, Louis Holland, who moves to Somerville, MA, to work in radio and finds himself in the midst of a series of rare earthquakes in the area, the first of which affects his grandmother a...more The writing in Strong Motion isn't as clean as in his later two novels, especially in the first third, where I felt like this was a book by Jonathan Franzen's less talented sibling, but thankfully the overwritten passages subsided and I was able to appreciate the rest of the novel.

It's about a 23-year-old Chicagoan, Louis Holland, who moves to Somerville, MA, to work in radio and finds himself in the midst of a series of rare earthquakes in the area, the first of which affects his grandmother and exacerbates a long-standing family dispute over money. Louis struggles to get along with everyone in the book and after a while you start to wonder if the other person is always in the wrong. There's his melodramatic mother who has always given in to his sister's requests for money but never thought to ask Louis what he needed; his pampered sister who's finishing an MBA at Harvard and going into banking; his sister's stand-offish boyfriend who's the son of a wealthy leader in a local energy company; a 29-year-old Harvard seismologist studying the earthquakes and quickly caught up in Louis's family troubles; a lonely raccoon who's estranged from his own family; a minister who's set up a church in Boston to rid the state of its abortion clinics. In their different situations, all the characters confront why others aren't nicer to them and what exactly it is others want from them.

I personally enjoyed it and really identified with certain struggles conveyed, but I'd recommend it only to true Franzen fans, as it does have its weaknesses. For example, the characters tend to go into long speeches/rants to each other that bear no resemblance to true conversational speech. Many of these ideas would be more plausible if left to internal reflection by the characters, but here come off as tangled monologues. And it reveals that the characters don't truly have different voices, which isn't something an author should highlight. It's also oddly dated in presenting a Republican party that's at odds with fundamentalism, but it serves as a time capsule in this manner. [Franzen seems to have learned that satirizing liberals makes for better book sales (and reviews) than satirizing conservatives, as he does here.]

Overall, 3.5 stars. (less)

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Jul 06, 2012 Jessica Fishman rated it 3 of 5 stars

While I am always impressed w/ Franzen's intellect and skill, I grow increasingly tired of a cynicism in his characters that alternately makes me loathe them or feel that Franzen does. I appreciate his layered character development and a willingness to write characters that are 'messy,' giving voice to the less than saintly thoughts and choices we all make in our lives. Still, so many of Franzen's characters seem either deeply narcissistic and inherently miserable as people (usually the men) or...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Bill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

First off, I'd give this book four and a half stars if I could. I really enjoyed it, and thought it was beautifully crafted, but I wasn't so hooked that I couldn't put it down, and I didn't really find myself having those occasional flashes of thoughts of "I wonder what happens next".

I think my bigger issue is it was hard to pinpoint exactly what was driving the story, especially in the first quarter to third of the book. I fully realize that was Franzen's intent, and I would have immediately d...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Reading “Strong Motion” felt like having an exquisite meal with well aged wine. Franzen is a true master. His characters are complex and multidimensional drawing one’s attention towards themselves and this attention is constantly fuelled by building up expectations to discover yet another aspect of an individual. The author tells the story from different people’s perspectives delving into their past to shed some light on why they are what they are in the present, but he tends to do this in a ver...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pop-lit

What's to say other than Franzen continues to deliver with this novel? His language is as precise and engagingly sophisticated as ever without being impenetrable. Unlike "The Corrections," the novel's POV stays with mostly one character, which is more befitting the scope of this story. Franzen's ability to write from a woman's perspective continues to amaze and delight, and he explores some corners of the human condition he's not taken us to before. It bears saying that, as with all other of his...more

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Oct 21, 2009 Adam rated it 3 of 5 stars

Alright. Generally, I love books when they have a unique narrative style/sense of prose and very strong characters. One or the other will do in a pinch. Franzen's characters are strong here, particularly Louis and Renee, but they don't matter except for the first of four books and the last ten or so pages. His decision to show a post-modern streak and suddenly write about the origins of Boston in the context of the family, and other little delves into the unnecessary, are unnecessary and come of...more

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Oct 12, 2012 Ryan rated it 3 of 5 stars

An interesting book. A lot of the trademark Franzen characteristics that made him one of the most popular writers in the country are seen throughout this book, and his depiction of America and its problems set against the backdrop of a series of bizarre earthquakes around Boston is excellent. But just as Franzen's brilliant style and introspection draw me in, his own genius and desire to show off that genius hurt the book at times. He writes one passage from the perspective of a raccoon and anot...more

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Jul 09, 2011 Michael Moats rated it 4 of 5 stars

The domesticity and accessibility of Franzen’s most recent works, “Freedom” and the essay collection “The Discomfort Zone,” make it easy to rate him as a really great writer, but perhaps not a genius. “Strong Motion” is not only very different from its successors, but also evidence of what the author is capable of, starting with the ability to foresee a corporate and geological catastrophe 20 years ahead of time. More than any of his other novels, this one explains why Franzen was once called an...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I just finished this book and I think the prose is as masterful and poetic with the quirky juxtapositions that only Jonathan Frazen does so well. But I am completely confounded by the character of Louis - I could not relate to what he was supposed to be feeling -- mostly he seemed slightly depressed with the shallow, self-involved feelings that often accompany depression. Is that the point? He never feels anything very deeply? I didn't understand his motivations for leaving Renee for Lauren - he...more

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Mar 16, 2010 Bill Eberle rated it 2 of 5 stars

Let me say first of all that I loved "The Corrections" which is why I was eager to read another offering from the same writer. But this book does nothing right. Every character is unlikable. The plot (or one of the many plot lines) involves the "evil corporation" cliche that dominates so many stories and quickly became tiresome. And I can't imagine that this book ever got past an editor. Some of the prose was so poorly written I was literally laughing out loud. I rarely stop reading a book once...more

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Jul 02, 2011 Andra rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm on a Franzen kick.

The plot is engaging – a young man, Louis Holland (who seems comically similar to a young Jonathan Franzen) lives in Boston during a time of unexplained earthquakes and begins a relationship with a seismologist, Renee. Renee begins to suspect that the earthquakes are caused by a local chemical company’s illegal disposal practices. Sleuthing and adventures ensue.

The quality of the writing, for the most part, was spectacular. I especially enjoyed parts where Franzen got out o...more I'm on a Franzen kick.

The plot is engaging – a young man, Louis Holland (who seems comically similar to a young Jonathan Franzen) lives in Boston during a time of unexplained earthquakes and begins a relationship with a seismologist, Renee. Renee begins to suspect that the earthquakes are caused by a local chemical company’s illegal disposal practices. Sleuthing and adventures ensue.

The quality of the writing, for the most part, was spectacular. I especially enjoyed parts where Franzen got out of the heads of his main characters – Louis and Renee – and revealed other points of view. At one point, he speculates on the experience of Renee’s computer in a way that is both reflective of the time period (early 90’s) and relevant today. Discussing the ability of a computer to replicate human intelligence and the value of subjectivity, he writes:

“It’s much wiser to live rationally, as a machine does… Otherwise – if you let emotion trick you into thinking that there’s something unique or transcendent about human subjectivity – you might find yourself wondering why you’ve organized your life as if it were nothing but a machine for the unpleasant production and pleasant consumption of commodities.”

The quality of writing is striking, as in all of his work. At its core, I feel like Strong Motion reflects many of the questions Franzen’s characters, and perhaps the author himself, are grappling with: How do I find happiness? What is meaningful? Why am I here?

Later, Franzen presents Reverend Stites of the Church of Action in Christ, who plays a role in the lives of both Louis and Renee. I respect the thoughtful way the author dealt with questions of religion and the reverend character. Stites is perhaps the most well-reasoned character in the novel. During an exchange on religion, Stites says to Renee:

“… what I see on the other side is pure sentimentality and wishful thinking. This idea that human beings are essentially good and selfless. That you can cure sorrow and loneliness and envy and gluttony and lust and deceit and rage and pride with full employment and a good psychologist.”

Later, Stites asks Renee how she feels about herself as a person. I feel her response sums up feelings that pervade the novel, she responds: “I love myself, I hate myself. It adds up to zero.”

Strong Motion, I think, is about uncertainty. It’s about how characters learn to be at peace with themselves in an uncertain world.

Anyways, this long review intends to say two things: this is a great book, Jonathan Franzen is an exceptional writer. Highly recommended.
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Oct 12, 2011 Concha Marcos rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Franzen nos reserva una increible historia donde los terremotos reales se entremezclan con los terremotos del alma y de ahí el nombre de movimiento fuerte....
La increible historia de Louis Holland y su simple pero a la vez complilcada y sufrida vida nos va descubriendo una serie de personajes, situaciones y caracteres únicos pero todos con un denominador común son humanos antes de nada con todo lo que esto conlleva, son mezquinos, viles, corruptos, ambiciosos pero también buenos, honrados, hone...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Jeremy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As an admirer of Franzen, I enjoyed this book. It kept me company on Amtrak this week. For Franzenites, it's a must-read, of course; but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to others, as it's clear that Franzen hit his stride--his ability to minor in social criticism and major in stories that deftly navigate the turbulence of interpersonal relationships in postmodern, American culture--with the following novel, The Corrections. I'm looking forward to reading his first work, The Twenty-Seventh Ci...more

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Sep 20, 2009 Josie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the second Franzen I have read; the other was, of course, The Corrections. This one was very, very different. Flawed but also very good.

In Strong Motion it's like he's not mean yet, and he also isn't funny yet. Maybe those things happened together. It's 1991. The characters hate everyone, but Franzen loves them. It's a very long book with very few, intimately drawn characters. It's got a pretty intense Erin Brockovich/whodunit kind of plot that is entirely unnecessary. Sometimes I thoug...more

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About Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen is the author of The Corrections, winner of the 2001 National Book Award for fiction; the novels The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion; and two works of nonfiction, How to Be Alone and The Discomfort Zone, all published by FSG. His fourth novel, Freedom, was published in the fall of 2010.

Franzen's other honors include a 1988 Whiting Writers' Award, Granta's Best Of Young Ameri...more

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