This book hoovers you into its world from the first page and before you know what's what you've missed your bus stop and you are into it. But there are problems. Yes. I will tell you about some of them. You would expect no less of me.

I was reading along with the main character Patty Berglund’s autobiographical statement “Mistakes Were Made” (p 27 – 187) and was lapping it up until soap bubbles began appearing between me and the page. The bubbles became suds – undeniable suds. I could not divest myself of the realisation that things were getting soapier by the minute – no, I said, to any passing stranger who I could get to take an interest in the current state of literature, this is Jonathan Franzen messing with our heads, taunting us with the cardboardy and the cutouty. This is not to be taken completely seriously. E.g., hoving into view, with his axe in his hand, comes a character called Richard Katz, indie rock god, Mr Moody Bohemia and all purpose babe magnet.


Richard Kats
Wears cool hats
Has eyes for Patty
(Whose friend is batty)
His room-mate Walter
Will never fault her
Her heart may wander
But his gets fonder
Long and lean is
Richard’s penis
Walter’s trusting
But Patty’s lusting
Wait - is this Franzen
Or marzipanzen?

As Mr Katz’s pecker rose, so did my heart sink, for he is indeed a creature from Romanceland (that place of untrammelled pecs and mesmerising vaginas). His sultry pouting unshaven lips launch a thousand bustling teenage hips and one glance from his stubbly unshaven pouting guitar causes the female heart to bound about like an escaping baboon, and indeed such is his popularity that he can hardly write his tuneful songs of ten minute angst for having to shoo flocks of sweet 18 year olds gently away from his private parts.
This character is played straight. We are to take this character seriously and we are not to laugh. I gradually became aware of this as the character Richard Katz did not go away.
And oh my goodness gracious me, there is some horrible writing that bubbles up whenever he is centre stage. Richard is – yes, you get the picture! - the cool but morally bankrupt friend of Walter, the entirely uncool but totally bicycling and planet-befriending morally good guy. Here’s Richard meditating on his friendship with Walter :

No other man had warmed Katz’s loins the way the sight of Walter did after long absence. These groinal heatings were no more about literal sex, no more homo, than the hard-ons he got from a long-anticipated first snort of blow.

Ewww!

Richard Katz describing a woman :

A solid B-plus that could be an A-minus if she would work for extra credit.

Again : Ewww! By page 200 I was thinking that I’d be having more fun watching Desperate Housewives because the dialogue is wittier. It got so I was playing the game of spotting titles of old songs amidst the soap. I got “I only want to be with you” (Dusty Springfield, page 235), and “What are you going to do when I’m gone?” (Barbara Lewis, p 452).

Okay, what's good about Freedom? Ha ha, what an ironical question. This book gets most of its points for trying really really hard. For vein-throbbing brain-melding attempts to encompass the economics of Iraqi reconstruction contracts, mountaintop removal mining, songbird conservation and sundry other realities of the world's most modern country, and embed all of this into sketches of how two or three complicated families live from day to day and year to year, to pull all this together – well actually, a lot of the time it’s like JF is flailing away at his material, not the assured mover of chess pieces on the board but the frantically photographing & camcording and ambulance-chasing kind of novelist who rushes around after his many characters & can’t quite keep up with them all. That part of the whole thing I liked. But oh – phrases like

His thing with Connie was too intense and strange – too sincere, too muddled with love- to be fungible as coin of bragging.

and

Connie had a wry compact intelligence, a firm little clitoris of discernment and sensitivity

and

Katz’s blood was up, he was all jittery-jangly. It was like coke cut heavily with nasty meth. (Is this a simile JF thinks will ring bells with his readers? No, so it’s something his character the egregious Katz would think. But then how does this translate its meaning to the non coke-cut-heavily-with-nasty-meth-hoovering reader? It translates as : It was really quite unpleasant or I assume so. Maybe if the meth was nice he’d be just jangly and not jittery too. Oh I don’t know. )

Anyway - pretty ghastly. And - oh well, while I’m moaning and griping, here’s some more. On occasion Franzen goes into page long riffs on such things as road rage or the stupid things that teenagers do - these are exactly like riffs in a stand up comedian's routine. They’re quite fun in a sneery sort of way but they do seem like JF is getting a bit of humour in there in case he gets accused of having written another Big Depressing Hell In A Handbasket Novel, which really, this is (Iraq, global warning, environmental destruction, overpopulation, oh oh oh woe is us woe is us, smite us Lord, we fully deserve every last smite).

And : now obviously JF does not wish to do this, but every time one of his young characters (say Jessica) berates one of his slightly less young characters (say Lalitha) for being out of touch with they way young people do right now (e.g not knowing that kids have mostly abandoned emailing for texting) he, JF, is perforce, as author, advertising just how down with the kids he himself is, which, alas and alack, is kind of like seeing your 52 year old uncle do the Twist. No, the Frug. No, I mean that Body Pop thing.

And - this book is built out of sturdy slabs of knowingness and social nuance. You have to get what’s intended by the great many phrases like “in the earliest years when you could drive a Volvo 240 without feeling self-conscious”. Well, maybe some of us can’t quite be bothered to rack our brains to think what a Volvo 240 is and why it became something you would be ashamed of. (JF : Well, do your homework then. I want active engaged readers. PB : Yeah, I know, sorry and all. But I did finish your damned big book. So, you know, be quiet.)

JF in a Freedom-promoting interview said that the most important thing he should be doing in his novels is

‘To find an adequate narrative vehicle for the most difficult stuff at the core of me, in the hope that that might resonate with the reader who otherwise has been feeling alone with those deep, difficult feelings.’

Well, he tried, he really tried, and for a great number of star-besprinkling reviewers, he succeeded. It’s good, it is … er… good, long but good, long long long but quite good.