Reading 1001 discussion

Freedom
4 stars
Published 2010, read the audio version read by David LeDoux.
This is a story of an American family, Walter and Patty Bergland and their two children as well as other friends and family. It is set in the 1970s to the current 21st century. What I liked about the book was its setting. Patty in a New York girl who comes to play basketball at the University of Minnesota. She has family issues. Walter is a boy from Northern Minnesota (the Iron Range area). His father is an alcoholic. Eventually Walter and Patty marry. They have two children, a boy and a girl. Patty is a devoted mother and good with little children. They are a typical middle class, liberal Minnesotan family. Since I am from the Iron Range and a Minnesotan, it was fun to read this book that talks about Grand Rapids (where I grew up and graduated from high school), Hibbing, and St. Paul and things Minnesotan. Franzen did a great job of capturing the flavor of Minnesota. Eventually, Bergland's children become teens. Patty isn't such a good mother of teens. The family eventually moves to Washington DC. Patty really doesn't do very well. Walter has his career. The children move on to college and then to their own lives. Walter and Patty sort of fall apart for awhile. The perspective changes. Sometimes it is from Patty writing about the autobiography, sometimes its about one of the children or Walter. While I did like the story, there is a lot of sexual details that were not pleasant and the use of a lot of profanity but over all, I liked the story, I thought the author captured a family, the time period and the culture and events of the times very well.

Kristel wrote: "Freedom
4 stars
Published 2010, read the audio version read by David LeDoux.
This is a story of an American family, Walter and Patty Bergland and their two children as well as other ..."

yes, this is posted correctly! One thing I might change is the topic title. I would put the title as the book title. So instead of Book review Jan 16 I would edit the topic title to say "Freedom by Jonathan Franzen." To do this, you'd just click edit next to your topic title.

I’m hovering between 3 and 4 stars for this. The first third I really loved - Wyatt overheard the beginning with the neighbours and the description of the house and the kids and the basic husband and wife and asked me what the hell I was listening to because it was so catty. And it was, in such a great delicious way. I liked Patty’s story a great deal - liked that she struggled between being competitive and her socialization to be instead likeable or creative instead. I thought her being torn between the sexy guitar guy and the more sensitive and intelligent good guy made sense. I liked the way the layers of parenting piled up, each new set of parents trying to do it differently but not finding that as easy and workable as they’d assumed it would be. But as the book continued it came to grate on me a bit - I never quite understood Walter’s decision to take the job he did, I felt that Joey’s story came to an odd and abrupt end and needed more to it, I couldn’t figure out why jesica was ultimately such a non-character and I think at some point it all just hit that Party of Fice point where a few too many bad things have happened to the same people for the purpose of always upping the drama but it is all just too much. Kalitha annoyed me so much and I couldn’t decide if it was the narrator’s annoying accent/female voice for her or just the character. Conny was also pretty annoying and without anything ever being from her point of view it was hard to not be annoyed by what Franzen did with her.

I did like the grand, sweeping narrative attempt - corruption in Iraq, mining, the environment, political slime, date rape, rrc - and the way it was portrayed through this one family. But it needed a bit more grounding, I think, and a little less drama. (less)

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen is really a very easy read which I enjoyed a lot. It is about married couple, Walter and Patty and their children, friends and neighbors. I was immediately involved into the story, which is telling you how people make different compromises in life; how they often choose something they don’t want and then sacrifice their freedom. I could connect with characters, they are beautifully explored. Once you think that you know what somebody is going to do, he or she makes it completely opposite, so unpredictable. I guess life could be also unpredictable that way. It made me think all the time of my own freedom and my own choices, even though I think I am so happy with all of them. Only thing I didn’t like was the final part of the book, including the ending – too much drama and so sweet - not at all for my taste.

I LOVED this book. The plot was ingenious, especially the autobiographical and purportedly therapeutic reminisces of Patty, a main protagonist, titled Mistakes Were Made. Patty showed it to a lover who left it for her husband to read and mistakes were definitely made! There is so much packed into its nearly 600 pages of lyrical story telling. There is gentrification in the inner city, red necks colliding with the liberal elite, rocker chic, conservative children, the Iraq War, extramarital liaisons, neo-con politics and a piercingly excellent description of a right wing woman's thoughts about a conservationist. "...he didn't even belong to the homeowners association, and the fact tha he drove a Japanese hybrid, to which he had recently applied an OBAMA sticker, pointed, in her mind, towards godlessness and a callousness regarding the plight of hardworking families like hers, who were struggling to make ends meet and raise their children to be good, loving citizens in a dangerous world". Absolutely priceless. But it also explained to this reader, as I have never managed to understand previously, why so many hard scrabble people are bitterly opposed to gun control, despite the overwhelming evidence that it is necessary. They equate the right to bear arms with freedom to live as they choose. This is only one instance of many ways freedom is explored in this book. Now I notice that the Cerulean Warbler behind bars is the very clever cover illustration. This is a very definite, no questions asked, 5 star read.

Pip wrote: "I LOVED this book. The plot was ingenious, especially the autobiographical and purportedly therapeutic reminisces of Patty, a main protagonist, titled Mistakes Were Made. Patty showed it to a lover..."

I am glad you liked it Pip. I really like this one too.

Like the majority of people here, I thought this one was really strong and gave it 4 stars. Reading this at the same time as listening to the American Psycho audiobook was a really interesting way to get a lot of different takes on "American wasteland" at once.

I really was engrossed with the family's woes- especially the opening section and Patty's first account that gives the backstory of her and Walter.

One novel thing that I thought was effective about this book, is that the family starts off being gentrifying but guilty liberals. Usually these stories with themes about 'the lie of freedom for the well off in a propriety based society' follow intentionally exploiting capitalists. By making the story about this kind of family, it shows the ubiquity of this experience in middle America. It shows the role implicit 'keeping up appearances' efforts play, as well as the slippery slope of composing a part of your values for stable employment, in this illusion of freedom.

I also agree with Pip about the guns discussion being especially powerful. If you can't give people quality of life- you can sell them on intangible freedom. And if you have a massive gun industry, you can sell them a physical token of that "freedom" that makes them feel in control of something.


Something final I absolutely have to share here, is that I bought a second hand copy that had pages from this absolutely scathing review from the Atlantic tucked inside: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...

Whether you like the book or not, this review is horrible. It essentially harps on about how this book is juvenile/pointless because it doesn't use flowery or epic language and is about middle Americans (god forbid it's written in a voice these people would actually use?). Some gems include:

"Granted, nonentities are people too" (Why do you feel the need to grant that????)

" one need read only that the local school “sucked” and that Patty was “very into” her teenage son, who in turn was “fucking” the girl next door, to know that whatever is wrong with these people does not matter....Franzen’s strenuously contemporary and therefore juvenile language is a world in which nothing important can happen" No? Not only is the language in the book appropriate for characterization and context, but someone emphatically saying "Cancer sucks" is more moving than someone saying "This party is ghastly". That elitist idea that what common people go through doesn't matter because they use common language to frame it makes my blood boil.

He also says you can't "fuck your wife" because "you fuck whores"....well you can if you're realizing you don't love her anymore.

and that "nice" is a meaningless word to use to describe Walter's most pervasive character trait. (It's not- that line intentionally relays that the most significant thing about him is that he is mild mannered and uninspiring).

It's almost like the reviewer doesn't understand the basics of appropriate/effective language and thinks everything has to be flowery and intentionally obtuse, and that 'nonentities' aren't worth spending time with through their own lens. I guess this is largely a tangent I had to get off my chest lol- but it also gets to me on the level that stuff like this is exactly why these kind of books matter.

Rating: 4 stars


I really enjoyed this book, although I am in the minority amongst most of my GR friends. I do recall a god bit of hype surrounding this book back when it was released. Overhyped books often garner negative reviews. It was far from perfect, but extremely engaging nevertheless. Unlike most of my GR friends, I actually enjoyed this more than The Corrections, whch I also liked.

Negatives - the characters were all flawed and weren't always likeable. I eventually lost sympathy for characters I originally liked in the beginning. The book also dragged on in places. The second half of the book was not nearly as engaging as the first half (until the end, anyway).

Positives - I loved the tie-ins to current events and popular culture. I loved all the backstories of the different characters. I thought the character development was great.