Summary:
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 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.
I have been a huge fan of Jonathan Franzen since he first burst onto the scene with THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CITY and much critical attention. He was admired for being “wildly ambitious” and a gifted storyteller with the literary panache to keep readers talking. By the time THE CORRECTIONS came out, I was well versed in Franzen’s style after keeping steady tabs on him through his frequent New Yorker pieces. Franzen became the definition of a literary writer.
I read THE CORRECTIONS when it was first released and didn’t actually finish it until it was announced as one of Oprah’s Book Club selections. The day I finished it, crying at the raw and real emotions of the story of a family in turmoil, was the day it was announced that Franzen had been disinvited to the book club because of negative comments he had made to the media about Oprah’s Book Club.
I had the opportunity to meet Jonathan Franzen at an event in Boston a few years ago and he was charming, intelligent, thoughtful, and everything I hoped he would be in person. Essentially, he lived up to his own hype. We talked about bird watching and how he had lived in Somerville for a short period and gone bird watching in Marblehead, my home town. I wrote him a letter after our meeting to let him know how much I enjoyed our conversation. A few weeks later I received a postcard in the mail from Jonathan. I was beyond delighted.
When the early buzz started about FREEDOM and an excerpt was printed in the New Yorker, I was giddy with anticipation. I devoured the excerpt and knew the novel itself would be great.
I was not disappointed.
FREEDOM is a family saga about the Berglunds, but it is about so much more. It is about overpopulation, the destruction of wildlife, government, pop culture, family relationships and the ties that bind us. Walter and his wife Patty have a dysfunctional marriage. Walter has been in love with Patty since the moment he laid eyes on her in college and Patty enjoys Walter’s admiration. But her love for him is really based on how much he loves her. She loves his support and his kindness. She loves the children they created, Joey and Jessica. But does she really love Walter? Initially, her interest lay in Walter’s best friend and bad influence, Richard Katz. Richard and Patty have a strained relationship based on possible lust for each other and mutual respect for Walter. Essentially, they both love Walter but they have an undeniable attraction for each other.
Patty was a star athlete in college. She was used to getting everything she wanted. She can get Walter but she can’t get Richard. Therein lies the beginning of much of the problems that swirl throughout the marriage of Walter and Patty.
We are also introduced to the lives of Joey, Walter and Patty’s son, Richard and his music career and Walter and Patty’s parents.
The writing in FREEDOM is so beautiful that I found myself underlining entire pages of text, scrawling notes in the margins and sometimes just leaving a simple exclamation point to acknowledge the impact of the words printed on the page.
Franzen poses some interesting questions about freedom. Is too much freedom a blessing or a curse? Is true freedom the ability to be completely yourself without fear or worry? This is what I love about reading! When you are pushed to question things you had previously taken for granted. When you have an inner debate and dialogue and really try to understand the reasoning behind many of the choices you make.
All in all, I loved this novel. It was beautifully written. It was interesting. The characters were crafted with such honesty that they became real. I loved that it made me look at my own life with a different perspective and I started questioning the notion of freedom on a daily basis.
I highly recommend Jonathan Franzen’s FREEDOM.
