Freedom

by Jonathan Franzen
p 562

Alright I'll admit Jonathan Franzen is an acquired taste. Anyone who had the stamina to weather his novel The Corrections will know that reading his fiction is much like a marathon. The point being not always the best time, but only to finish and survive.
In Freedom he puts the marriage of Walter and Patty Bergland under his adept microscope of human nature and examines the nuances of marriage and raising a family.
Franzen takes middle class hopes and dreams and places them in the blender of life, only to see his characters deconstruct. Some survive, like Walter and Patty, but only after detours that neither could ever have imagined. Adapting and compromising in today's culture is what Franzen does best. His observations are dead-on, yet can be painful and revealing to us all. This novel is not for the squeamish, but I'm glad that I read it and survived.
It deserves the full Rock Chalk Jay Hawk, if for no other reason than Franzen is one of today's best writers!