The Corrections: A Novel

SUMMARY: Winner of the National Book Award After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man-or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home. Jonathan Franzenis the author ofThe Twenty-Seventh City,Strong Motion, and the essay collectionHow to Be Alone. He has been named one of theGranta20 Best Novelists under 40 and is a frequent contributor toThe New YorkerandHarper’s. He lives in New York City. Winner of the National Book Award Pulitzer Prize Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist Los Angeles TimesBook Award Finalist New York Times Book ReviewEditors’ Choice American Library Association Notable Book The Correctionsis a grandly entertaining novel for the new centurya comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married manor so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home. Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today,The Correctionsbrings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed. Richly realistic and darkly hilarious, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul. "Funny and deeply sad, large-hearted and merciless,The Correctionsis a testament to the range and depth of pleasures great fiction affords."David Foster Wallace "Jonathan Franzen has built a powerful novel out of the swarming consciousness of a marriage, a family, a whole cultureour culture. And he has done it with sympathy and expansiveness that bend the edgy modern temper to a generous breadth of vision."Don DeLillo "In its complexity, its scrutinizing and utterly unsentimental humanity, and its grasp of the subtle relationships between domestic drama and global events,The Correctionsstands in the company of Mann’sBuddenbrooksand DeLillo’sWhite Noise. It is a major accomplishment."Michael Cunningham The Corrections is a comic, tragic epic of worlds colliding: an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions, a new world of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed.After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man—or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home."Franzen shores up his Zeitgeist-heavy narrative with the indispensable masonry of a carefully crafted plot, exuberant yet plausible satire and, most of all, closely observed character ... Franzen narrates The Corrections with a subdued, assured and compassionate touch. The result is an energetic, brooding, open-hearted and funny novel that addresses refreshingly big questions of love and loyalty in America's rapidly fragmenting, meaning-challenged domestic sphere ..." - Chris Lehmann, The Washington PostJonathan Franzen author of The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion and two works of nonfiction, How to Be Alone and The Discomfort Zone, all published by FSG. His fourth novel, Freedom, was published in the fall of 2010. Like bookends of the past half century, the two generations of the Lambert family represent two very different aspects of America. Alfred, the patriarch, is a distant, puritanical company man; he is also slipping into Parkinson's-induced dementia. His wife, Enid, is a model Midwestern housewife, at once deferential and controlling. Their three children--Gary, an uptight banker, baffled by his own persistent unhappiness; Chip, and ex-professor now failing as a screenwriter; and Denise, and up-and-coming chief in a hot new restaurant--have little time for Enid and Alfred. But when Enid calls for one last Christmas at the family home, the trajectories of five American lifetimes converge. With this important, profoundly affecting work, Jonathan Franzen confirms his place in the top tier of American novelists. His unique blend of subversive humor and full-blooded realism makes The Corrections a grandly entertaining family saga.

Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, The Corrections brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.

Miami Herald

Wonderously devastating . . . In prose that is by turns suspenseful, brooding, and, oh yes, compassionate, Franzen unrolls the huge, bleak panorama of the Lamberts' past and present lives, their temptations, failures, mistakes and false hopes, their intimate acquaintance with the hot flash of selfishness and the sharp bitterness of rue.

A comic, tragic epic stretching from the Midwest of the Midcentury to the Wall Street and Easter Europe of today, The Corrections brings and old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed. After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately , her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of thierown lives. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on bringing the family together for one last Christmas at home. (back cover) This novel revolves around the troubles of an elderly Midwestern couple and their three adult children, tracing their lives from the mid-twentieth century to "one last Christmas" together near the turn of the millennium. All five members of the Lambert family get their due, as everybody's lives swirl out of control. The author intends to deliver a tragicomic portrait of a flawed nation with the equally flawed notion of perfectibility at its heart A cloth bag containing ten copies of the title, that may also include a folder with miscellaneous notes, discussion questions, biographical information, and reading lists to assist book group discussion leaders