Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jonathan Franzen is a very good writer. There were parts of this novel that I liked, but other parts where I was bored out of my mind. Part of my boredom stemmed from the characters being unlikeable. Patty is the most relevant of the main characters because she lets us in on her feelings and transformation throughout the book. We could have been spared the boredom and read a 200 page book entitled Patty’s Autobiography. This novel has everything that is needed to keep the reader interested; infidelity, tragedy, poop and a whole scene where a “dick” does the talking. Most of the time I still wasn’t laughing. It is like watching a stand-up comedian on TV. The jokes are funny and you see the person on TV laughing but there is a disconnect and you can’t seem to laugh. In fact some of the scenes were not even believable. Could you image Jessica’s brother Joey purposely having sex in the adjoining room to make his sister angry when he was a teenager. Or Joey moving in with their neighbors? Walter changes in the novel from his early shy complacent self to a raging madman and we are not really told why. Believe me I was ok with it because learning why could have been another 200pages. The point being, among all the drama and crazy stream of conscious-like descriptions Franzen still leaves out some major character development necessities. Some of the descriptions in the book are worth reading but don’t fit the soap opera style drama that unfolds.
Franzen set out to create a novel about everyday life in upper middle class America and mostly succeeded. Our lives are not always predictable and ordinary but other times teeter on the threshold of monotony. However, I read this book to be entertained and this novel teeters on being unentertaining and confusing. In fact to me the number one flaw is that the books chronology is so confusing I caught myself checking to make sure that I wasn’t rereading a passage more than once, or skipped a section. It made me think Franzen had a surprise to his ADHD timeline but in fact there was none. Just a ending with everyone living happily ever after.


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