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The Corrections (2001)

by Jonathan Franzen

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
16,269340307 (3.75)1 / 480
"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 heart 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"--… (more)
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    charlie68: Touches on a lot of the same themes just in a different era.
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    bluepiano: A similar cast of characters--rigid paterfamilias, compliant wife, and troubled adult children who are loth to return to the family home. And an interesting contrast, because Navarre's tone, approach, and attitude are altogether unlike Franzen's.
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» See also 480 mentions

English (311)  Dutch (8)  Italian (4)  Spanish (4)  German (4)  Catalan (2)  Swedish (2)  French (1)  Finnish (1)  Hebrew (1)  Norwegian (1)  All languages (339)
Showing 1-5 of 311 (next | show all)
Puoi trovare questa recensione anche sul mio blog, La siepe di more

Le correzioni, che è stato il libro di maggio e giugno per LiberTiAmo (sono sempre puntuale, eh?), è uno dei romanzi più lenti che abbia letto nella mia vita. Non perché sia un brutto libro – tutt’altro – ma perché la storia impone una lettura lenta per lasciare che il suo messaggio arrivi a destinazione: dopo averlo finito, infatti, continuerà a vorticarvi in testa per giorni.

Questo perché Franzen ha scritto un corposo romanzo familiare che ci spinge a chiederci quanto l’educazione dei nostri genitori, soprattutto quella che, seppur in buonafede, era mirata a correggere comportamenti ritenuti inopportuni, possa aver influito sulle nostre vite e se sia possibile intervenire per evitarlo.

Per seicento pagine leggiamo di Gary, Chip e Denise e dei loro inutili tentativi di sfuggire alle correzioni familiari, tentativi che sfociano in autentici disastri. Neppure i genitori, Alfred ed Enid, sono da meno: anzi, è proprio il loro pessimo rapporto a gettare ombre sulla crescita dei figli.

Ho amato molto la capacità di Franzen di costruire dei personaggi così poliedrici da rendere quasi impossibile al lettore di schierarsi per l’uno o per l’altro: nel corso della storia,infatti, tutti quanti riescono a mettere in crisi l’idea che ci eravamo fatti di loro, rimescolando le carte e tratteggiando una situazione familiare piena di desideri frustrati, affetti mancati e gelosie sapientemente costruite dove i confini tra vittima e carnefice sono molto sfocati... ( )
  kristi_test_02 | Jul 28, 2023 |
I doubt that I would have thought as highly of this book when I was younger but now, having dealt with my own parents' aging and declining health, I had much more interest in and empathy for all the members of the Lambert family. ( )
  leslie.98 | Jun 27, 2023 |
A positive impression despite innumerable faults

The phenomenon of the persistent positive impression is something I call The Carver Effect (After Raymond Carver, whom I continue to admire despite significant reservations regarding most all his stories. (Inverse of The Borges Effect, whose author still leaves a middling impression despite my enjoying, to a certain extent, many of his works. (Though my favorite remains The Aleph, perhaps the least Borges of Borges in that it contains at least a residue of human interest.)))

Franzen's characters have a tendency to fall flat. Their situations read contrived. The spoof of inflated campus-adjacent post-docs and empty-hole bourgeois is roll-my-eyes bad. His women don't have non-Bechdel problems. Their inner lives, though effortfully described, remain prurient sketches. The paterfamilias possesses an improper prosody, "Better not to leave here than to have to come back." (This, we no longer have to assume, is a direct quotation from Franzen's actual father, affixed to the last page of the novel in incongruity with (revolt against) the surrounding prose.)

Yet, Franzen displays a studied way of describing things as if he has actually seen them. About once or twice a paragraph one encounters something clever, or so intimately characterized one almost has the impression the reader's own life has been captured on the page (similar to certain, not-infrequent moments in Nabokov). "Corpuscular" impressions of the "crepuscular." The maniacal game of kicking packages up the stairs. Circling 'M's in the New York Times. The pan-fried liver warped so that it won't sit flat on a plate. "Buttery" alkali metals. The instinctual photo-taking of one's spouse later revealed, in a moment of reverse-anagnorisis, (analogous to a certain powerful scene in To the Lighthouse i.e. the dramatic irony is that characters know something we do not) such that the instinctual taking of photographs read as "sign of intimacy" is revealed to be motivated by the construction of a "body of evidence" against her - as evidence one was already in pain.

"He saw nothing but the principles [principals] at stake." [my reading]

"He's sowing salt in the field of the financially unrighteous."

"Without ever figuring out that this excruciating perpendicular stroke was actively suppressing orgasm."
( )
  Joe.Olipo | Jun 4, 2023 |
Ci ho messo 10 mesi a leggere questo libro (anche se per fortuna nel frattempo ne ho letti altri, tutti saggi), quindi il mio parere lascia il tempo che trova. La struttura del libro ha assecondato la frammentarietà del mio leggere e l'ha resa tutto sommato sopportabile, facendomi comunque apprezzare le doti di scrittura del libro (che evidentemente sono notevoli) e la storia in sé e per sé. Mi viene voglia di leggere altro di Franzen. ( )
  d.v. | May 16, 2023 |
I've read this book four times. It's fantastic and gets better every read. ( )
  JessicaMcN | May 11, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 311 (next | show all)
Franzen’s brilliant achievement is that he creates a set of stereotypical characters and then opens the door and allows us see, in suspenseful, humorous, mesmerizing detail, their defining moments. What was once a silhouette becomes three-dimensional. The complexity becomes a dim mirror of our own complex interiority—writ large, the way we like it writ, because then we can’t help but see ourselves in it.
 
Hvis du skal ta med deg en eneste roman på sommerferie, bør det bli Jonathan Franzens "Korrigeringer". Du kan ikke gjøre noe bedre kjøp akkurat nå. Men romanen gjør deg ikke dermed til en lykkelig konsument, mener Tom Egil Hverven.
added by annek49 | editNRK, Tom Egil Hverven (Jun 24, 2002)
 
'Met voorsprong het beste boek dat ik in jaren gelezen heb. Het enige slechte is dat het jammer genoeg na 502 pagina's ophoudt.'
added by guurtjesboekenkast | editDe Morgen, Yves Desmet
 
'De correcties is een zeldzaamheid: een boek dat hoog inzet, stilistisch verbluft en niet kan worden weggelegd tot het is uitgelezen.'
added by guurtjesboekenkast | editNRC Handelsblad, Pieter Steinz
 
Fremragende amerikansk roman minder os om hvor nøjsomme vi i grunden er herhjemme. Litterært set.
added by 2810michael | editJyllands-Posten, Niels Lillelund
 

» Add other authors (10 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Franzen, Jonathanprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Abarbanell, BettinaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Baardman, GerdaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Freire de Andrade, Maria JoãoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Groenenberg, HuubTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Guidall, GeorgeNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lameris, MarianTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lundgren, CajTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Pareschi, SilviaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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To David Means and Geneve Patterson
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The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through.
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The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid the price for the privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Wikipedia in English (3)

"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 heart 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"--

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Book description
The Corrections is a 2001 novel by American author Jonathan Franzen. It 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.
Haiku summary
You're soldiering on . . . ?
It might become interesting . . . ?
It doesn't. Trust me.

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