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Post by katycarl on Jan 22, 2008 1:11:40 GMT -5
Anyone here read Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections"? Does anyone have opinions? I just finished the book and am eager to trade thoughts.
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Post by syme on Jan 24, 2008 22:52:24 GMT -5
Hmmm... I wish I could help, but I've never even heard of it. Is that really bad? What's it about?
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Post by katycarl on Jan 26, 2008 17:04:43 GMT -5
It's really excellently written on a technical level (Oprah endorsement notwithstanding -- like One Hundred Years of Solitude). The reason I ask is that while the last pages speak of hope, I left the book with the taste of despair in my mouth. Part of it was that the early narrative and character development promised much more than, in the conclusion, it delivered. Part of it was the anticlimactic, almost cruel flatness of the ending. Very little is resolved, and the 'hope' offered to one character is a sort of paltry cliched permission to focus more on herself that hardly seems to make up for what she's suffered in the 650 intervening pages.
I'm still glad I read it, for stylistic points if not for training in the use of plot. But there's a lot going on in the book, thematically and otherwise, that I would like to talk about with like-minded readers.
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