Freedom

De: Jonathan Franzen

Narrado por: David Ledoux

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 this instant number one best-selling novel, Jonathan Franzen charts the mistakes and joys of these intensely realized characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world. An epic of contemporary love and marriage, Freedom is a deeply moving portrait of our time.

©2010 Jonathan Franzen (P)2010 HarperCollins Canada

The best narrated Franzen novel

Having binged Corrections and Crossroads, this was most enjoyable due to the reader. Recommended.

Good book if you like this kind of stuff

I'm not really all that into fiction novels. The multidimensional storytelling is an interesting journey, but I was really attached to any characters. The sequence of events is questionable for me.

I think this just isn't my kind of novel.

I've tried

I have attempted this book a few times, but it eludes me. I just don't like the characters because they don't ring true. I've heard how much people enjoy Franzen's writing. I'm not one of them