Freedom

A Novel

By: Jonathan Franzen

Narrated by: David LeDoux

Length: 24 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections, a darkly comedic novel about family.

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul - the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter - environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man - she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz - outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival - still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become “a very different kind of neighbor,” an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's intensely realized characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.

©2010 Jonathan Franzen (P)2010 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"The Great American Novel." ( Esquire)

"It’s refreshing to see a novelist who wants to engage the questions of our time in the tradition of 20th-century greats like John Steinbeck and Sinclair Lewis . . . [This] is a book you’ll still be thinking about long after you’ve finished reading it." (Patrick Condon, Associated Press)

“Writing in prose that is at once visceral and lapidary, Mr. Franzen shows us how his characters strive to navigate a world of technological gadgetry and ever-shifting mores, how they struggle to balance the equation between their expectations of life and dull reality, their political ideals and mercenary personal urges. He proves himself as adept at adolescent comedy as he is at grown-up tragedy; as skilled at holding a mirror to the world his people inhabit day by dreary day as he is at limning their messy inner lives . . . Mr. Franzen has written his most deeply felt novel yet—a novel that turns out to be both a compelling biography of a dysfunctional family and an indelible portrait of our times." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

I agree with Marlen from Santa Barbara. I have to force myself to continue. It is torture. The dialogue is repetitive and the narrative is awful. Don't waste your money. When I bought this the rating was well over 4 but it has been sliding ever since.

The title doesn't fit

What disappointed you about Freedom?

The characters and their choices, the narrator's voice

Has Freedom turned you off from other books in this genre?

I later heard this author speak and that confirmed that I would not be interested in any more of his work.

Not for me

I have just proven to myself that I should not get a book because of it being on Oprahs book list. There are a few books in her club that I have liked but this is not one of them. I am sorry that I got it.

2D Unlikeable Characters

I'm completely stumped as to how this book received any good reviews. The story is filled with 2 dimensional, stereotype laden, wholly unlikable characters. I kept listening, hoping at least one of the subjects would redeem themselves in some way by the end of the book, and act to some degree like a real person would, but it was not to be. The entire first hour plus is one huge, rambling, nonsensical run on sentence read at a breakneck pace that the narrator must have suffered exhaustion from after reading. This book was a waste of a great many hours, and I will not be reading any more of Mr. Franzen's works based on this experience.

Boring story

I am surprised by the hype for this book. I found the characters shallow and the story boring. I just did not get the point.

Long winded Soap

When I started listening, and then listened some more, I couldn't shake the fact that I felt that instead of watching an afternoon soap show I was listening to one. Was it well written, yes. Were the characters interesting, yes. However, one cannot liken this, or categorize this, as a Classic. Could I see these characters in my friends and family, yes. I've been an audible customer for years and this book was not worth my time or money. Meaning, I didn't sit in my car waiting for a chapter to end or, at the end of the book said "that was great". I was actually glad when it ended.

Not nearly as good as the corrections

This book made a bad habit of droning on and on relentlessly. Having read the author's other book the corrections I was kind of used to this style of character building, and it was wonderful in his other book, however in this book a lot of the backstory had no real point. Characters were just speaking to speak. Once you get past that story itself is okay but unremarkable. The summary is far more interesting than the actual book. I saw someone else say that the end was very satisfying but I adamantly disagree here. I don't wanna ruin anything for anyone but all that droning on, all that talking, all that useless dialogue, the fights, the journey, the epic that you go through with these people is all for nothing. This book was a let down to me but that's only me.

Do yourself a favor and skip this book

This novel is full of stereotypical people, boring, predictable and difficult to relate to or like.

The reader is a good match, bad.

I just didn't get it

Maybe it went over my head. The only thing that surprised me about this book was how much sex there was, since so many contemporary authors don't even bother with it. Of course, this being Franzen, the sex was not enjoyable to read, being a lot of pathetic, compulsive masturbation, men being led by their d---ks and people so caught up in their own misery and self consciousness that they can't enjoy it. This is my biggest problem with Franzen's writing -- he very much dislikes/holds at a distance/tortures his characters. So why should I care about them? However, after slogging through, albeit skimming a bit, the ending did get to me, but maybe it was due to the sheer relief that it was over.

I wanted to kill myself....

Good Lord this book was dragged out and boring as HELL. Honestly, it may as well be a left wing manifesto that is poorly written. I didn't finish the book because it was driving me crazy. I think the 2 stars Igave it is an over rate. Dont bother.