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)

Worse than the sum of its parts

Any additional comments?

Freedom is a rich, provocative novel, one with well-defined and realistic characters. David LeDoux's reading is more of a performance, giving each character distinct voices (a few missteps here, notably the Indian woman) and making them come alive.

And in that combination lies the problem. These characters are unlikable and sometimes downright repulsive, wholly absorbed in themselves and their sometimes-douchey first-world problems. Their rage, depression, and selfishness comes alive, and, although deeply flawed characters really are the most interesting, listening to them rant and snipe their realistic way through your morning commute is rather unpleasant.

Freedom is certainly a must-read because of its analysis of Contemporary American Problems: this is one of those novels that, a hundred years hence, literature professors will assign for its timeliness, if not for its

Struggled to finish

Decent narrator, however, the story itself left the listener with alot of unanswered questions. Perhaps the book just didn't live up to the hype.

Loved the performance, except…

For Lalitha’s voice. Very cringe.

The story is great—classic Franzen family tale. Gets Saint Paul nearly flawlessly.

An American Classic

I spent a wonderful 24 hours listening to "Freedom", examining my own political leanings and marital history and consumerist tendencies as Franzen's characters displayed theirs. I am roughly the same age as Walter and Patty Berglund, so the subject matter - a beautiful and complex story of a modern American family - was as familiar to me as my own personal history.

The narration was excellent (except for the female Indian character, who tended to sound like a caricature at times). I found myself rapt with attention, stopped in my driveway, unable to bring in the groceries and unwilling to tend to my email and cell phone messages.

Highly recommended.

A complexly written modern masterpiece.

I laughed, I cried ... And just about everything else, but I was never bored.

The book examines the life of a group of people who personify modern American Homo sapiens.

The story vomits up the underlying restrained desperation of a lost generation in the last century of a dieing Empire.

5 STARS +, One of the best books Audible has to offer in my opinion.

Sublime

One of my top five all-time favorite audible selections, this novel is a joy for the listener in every way. The narration is fabulous, the characters incredibly real and complex and the story a perfect balance between medium highs and mid-range lows lows, with nothing too tragic or stupendous, but an authentic and compelling mix of the ebbing and flowing of life. It was like eating the most satisfying meal one can imagine.

Incredible depth of characters

I typically read (listen to) non fiction but was drawn to this book by all the hype. I must say it lives up to the hype. I was riveted by the narrative and sucked in to the story. The characters, despite their frequently despicable choices, came alive for me as if they were someone I knew from the past. It helped that I'm from the upper Midwest and familiar with the different locations of the story. For lovers of fiction, I think this is must.

Good

The subject matter isn't my cup of tea (family issues) but it moved along nicely and was well read. I liked the characters and it had a good ending and I wasn't sorry to see it end.

worth the time

This was pretty good and pretty well read. the main problem is with the characters. They are just not interesting enough to spend so many hours of your own life on. but the reader was good and i enjoyed it more than my wife did who struggled through the print version

Amazing author, decent narrator

I can't praise enough about Franzen as an author and others will do it much better.
I can say that the narrator was engaging, made dialog between characters intriguing, and easy to follow. Only reason for 4 stars on narration was an Indian accent that was as tragic as this novel. Otherwise, well done.