Crossroads

A Novel

De: Jonathan Franzen

Narrado por: David Pittu

"Narrator David Pittu superbly transports the listener into the lives of the Hildebrandts, a family with many secrets." - AudioFile Magazine

This program includes a bonus conversation between the author, Jonathan Franzen, and the narrator, David Pittu.

Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.

It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless—unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who’s been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.

Jonathan Franzen’s novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.

A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Less than! an hour in and I'm hooked...

Been waiting on this for awhile, I've only just started it and love it. Exactly what Jonathan Franzen is good at,thank you. I'm so glad to see it's twenty four hours to listen to.

post book interview - awesome!

having an author and reader interview after the book is brilliant! thank you. hearing others about the book when i’ve just finished it is always what i want most.

Great story, not-so-great narrator

I went back and forth between the Audible and Kindle versions. The narrator and his various "voices" were too much for me, so I finished up reading the book rather than listening to it. He was awful at female voices, black voices, and particularly, Navajo voices. Oh my god. So bad. Either read it straight, or have multiple readers.

It's complicated.

While I found the first few chapters slow going, with rather cloying characters and circumstances in which I had little interest, I stuck with it. This book is a deep dive into the internal/ external lives of its characters and the performance is excellent. Intentionally or not, it reveals questions about what is goodness, selfishness, Good works, faith or belief, personal fulfillment, God, family. The ending, however, is not satisfying and feels almost deliberately a tease. I was annoyed.

Technically brilliant, philosophically pointless

Me Franzen writes with the precision and wit of a sniper. His command of English is a joy to have flowing past your face in the excellent Audible production. However, his narrative is populated with characters who function poorly, undermine themselves and one another, flipping on the beach of life like brain-dead fish. Their own disturbed thought processes are wittily explained by the author, but I spent a week with characters whom I cannot admire and seldom liked. I learned nothing. I was entertained but repeatedly angry at his characters’ bypassing opportunities for redemption. I will not buy anymore Franzen. Being amused by the poor functioning of broken people is not of interest to me.