the 2000s' response to White Noise. a book that I hope I remember when I am old so I can read it again and see it through the eyes of a woman Enid's age.

An expertly-written, awkward, family story about regular lives and serious problems. At first I wasn’t sure about this book, I thought it wasn’t my preferred type of story. Plus, it’s hella long. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The dysfunctional relationship between family members is frustrating; their decisions make you want to punch them, but their hopelessness is simultaneously endearing. It’s real, nitty-gritty family “fun.” My favorite part is probably the way Franzen writes the perspective of Alfred in his dementia... sounds a bit grim, but it shows just how hard the struggle is for him and his whole family.

This book was the first book I read in a long time that seemed to let the characters really push the story. Too often, even in good literature, the characters seem inexplicably pushed on by the story; The plot seems more real, more palpable, than the people. This plot, however, clearly rests on the shoulders and conscience's of the characters. Anyone interested in character development (or stories that take place, much of the time, in Philly) should consider this book an indispensible read.

I FINALLY finished The Corrections. Long read. I ended up liking it but I can't say I enjoyed every single bit of it. Some paragraphs I could have done without. But all in all it was good.

In 60-plus pages and that was enough. If the author hoped for crass ribaldry - even in the spirit of mockery - to convey humour then he would be disappointed, as is this reader. The affair between Chip and Melissa was gratuitously meaningless, a series of tasteless sex scenes fronted by two characters who are little more than walking cardboard cut-out failings of the imagination, fulfilling only, one suspects, the pleasure of the writer who so generously coloured in the details. This reader can brave word vomit and odd syntax in the spirit of characterisation and narrativised monologue, but not uninteresting characters whose 'quirks' (and not particularly thought-provoking ones at that) occupy the whole of that shell called their personality. Reading 60-plus pages was enough: they give no reason to go further.

Great.

You know when you tell someone about something that's bugging you and they don't really get it? This was the opposite of that for me. YMMV.

Quite fantastic.

I love Mr Franzen.

3.5, really.

Well, here's something: I'm about eight pages in and it's already knocked me on my butt. I read the first paragraph three times before I could go on. Phew. This one's gonna be a doozy.

As engaged as I was at points, a lot of the time this felt like a slog. Franzen seems to almost go out of his way to make each character in the Lambert family as dislikable as possible. There's a degree to which this pays off in the end but, even then, it's still pretty bleak. Making you care nevertheless is certainly a skill, I'm just not sure I needed 600 pages of evidence of it.