29.08.11
'The Corrections' is a wonderful novel, clever and inspiring. 'Freedom' is clever too, its language masterfully controlled, but also angry, bitter, cynical, depressing. I'm all for an anti-hero but these characters were, without exception, so objectionable that it was impossible to empathise with their stories, sucking the humanity from them so that they became cyphers for Franzen's disillusionment. Yes, I read to learn, and many of its political points are painfully sharp, but it was a little like being lectured for 600 pages.
Oh. A quick word cloud of this review, cynical, objectionable, sucking, painfully, lectured, suggests Freedom is not one worth adding to the reading list.
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