Crossroads

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This one takes place in 1971 stateside in the shadow of a faraway war in Vietnam. The family at the heart of this tale is the Hildebrandts, a family head by an associate minister at an inner-city church, Russ…who has run into the cruel reality that he is not so well-liked at his church…there is a hot young minister who connects with the youth…who has supplanted him and passed him by in what serves as a career path for some and an oddity for others.

Russ is sick of his life, sick of his marriage. But his wife Marion is also sick of him.

Of course there are kids…Becky, popular and confused, falling in love with the hot young guitarists at Crossroads, a kind of Sunday School meets the rock concert vibe…. there is brother Clem, a moral absolutist and huge pain in everyone’s ass…and there is brother Perry, who sells drugs…

There are a few laugh-out-loud parts (the foot washing scene, for one) as well as explorations of religion and philosophy, colonialism, white savior-ism, etc. And a wrap up that had me nodding along and maybe hitting harder than I might have realized it would.

Franzen’s books are all about layers and digging into the present and the past that led us to this point. At 580 pages, this is a hefty dose of expositional voyages but it never seems tedious. Mostly it’s just fun going along for the ride. The fact that this is a period piece just gives it an extra layer to work with.

Took me a month to read but it was worth it. Always enjoyable.






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