Freedom in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Jul 28, 2015 Chelsea rated it it was amazing

Shelves: book-club, favorites

whoa that was epic. tempted to go with the full 5 stars here. a book club pick with so much to discuss! spoilers---would Walter have fallen in love with Lalitha had Patty not had the affair with Richard? (why is "lalitha" so similar to "Lolita"?)
why is Walter so gosh darn good? but is he really? why don't we see more of Jessica? Is it wrong that I kind of like patty?
and the whole overarching theme of freedom (duh?) was rather brilliant throughout. the characters and their situations reminded me ...more

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Feb 03, 2011 Jane rated it really liked it

amazing. I'd give it a 4.5 really. I loved the characters and the sentences and the many ways in which the theme of freedom echoed throughout the book. So many problems with freedom. I don't think that all of the sections worked and balanced each other...too much about the mining/Walter's plans and dreams...too brief a tender conclusion. The parts didn't balance the whole. Also, I'm a little unclear about which part of the diary Walter read earlier, before he kicked his wife out of the house, an ...more

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Dec 13, 2010 Sarah rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction

I'll start with the positive, Jonathan Franzen is a really good writer. I mean really good. And this story certainly held my interest in a way that The Corrections never did. However, with that said I still didn't really enjoy this book. Franzen must think all men are assholes and all women are idiots. It is hard to identify with any character or theme in this book because Franzen is so disdainful of everything - the political right, the political left, government contractors, environmentalists, ...more

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Mar 10, 2014 Sam rated it really liked it

Really it's more of a 3.5 stars book - after not liking the characters but being drawn into their web of spite and feelings compounded by years of being unable to speak freely I finally got to the payoff of the book only to be let down by end, kinda like all the sexual encounters described in the book.

No one actually gets what they want and no one is truly free from the vicious cycle of parental damage, which is an imagined prison. All in all Franzen captures the knot of problems that befall a m ...more

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Nov 29, 2014 Gayle rated it really liked it

....saving my full review/comments until after my Book Club meets to discuss this.
But for now, I'll say.....Although the length of this book was daunting at first and it was slow to pull me in, the writing flowed easily (despite the tangents) so I found it easy to get past the first (slow) section. Once past that, the story went smoothly. ...more

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Nov 03, 2014 Megan rated it liked it

Shelves: finished-2014

While reading this tome, I kept thinking, "Boy, is this one messed-up family!" But really, in retrospect, I don't think they are any more or less messed up than anyone else. ...more

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Aug 30, 2010 Sarah rated it did not like it

Shelves: fiction

I originally got this book from my local library on a 7-day checkout. I returned it without finishing it and just spent the past month or so plodding to the end. Yet again (like The Corrections), Franzen has written a book full of horrible, unsympathetic characters. This time, though, he desperately needed an editor to keep him from rambling to the point of losing track of storylines. There was a lot of hype around this book, and I was (in case you hadn't guessed) very disappointed in it. I'm no ...more

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