Freedom
by Jonathan Franzen
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Description
The idyllic lives of civic-minded environmentalists Patty and Walter Berglund come into question when their son moves in with aggressive Republican neighbors, green lawyer Walter takes a job in the coal industry, and go-getter Patty becomes increasingly unstable and enraged.Tags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
anonymous user Both are 500+ page modern epics whose stories originate in the Midwest but this one moves far beyond the territory and scope of Freedom. Represented and sold by same agent as Franzen's book and same UK publisher.
41
susiesharp They are both about the lives of people you learn to care about yet don't always like
21
JuliaMaria Umweltschützer
BillPilgrim Another modern family story. Jonathan Franzen recommended The Privileges to the New Yorker book club.
22
Member Reviews
This is in some sense a modern American tragedy, not just because of the death of one of the characters. It has an overriding sense of loss, due to the characters inability to see the larger impact of their actions on their families. I think this is a terrific novel because we really get to know each of the characters really well, and can sympathize with them, despite (or because of ) their flaws. And because the tragedy here is not on such a grand scale (as say War and Peace), it's one that many of us can relate to. But like War and Peace, there is a certain resolution and resignation at the end that I found very satisfying.
What a fantastic read that left me in equal measures totally enthralled and drained at the same time. The devil is in the detail throughout this book as Franzen delves into each characters mulitiple neuroses. Unnerving at times and painfully accurate about the fragile nature of relationships and our own bizarre dalliances with the concept of freedom - many types of freedom are investigated here. This is a book that forces you to really get to know the characters inside out and at times it makes for uncomfortable reading as you might not like what you find out about people but nevertheless reading this epic saga is unfailingly rewarding.
Freedom is much like Jonathan Franzen's last book, The Corrections, only more so. If you liked his story of a dysfunctional family from the midwest, you'll love his new tale of a liberal, midwestern family with issues of their own.
The book begins with a summary of the life that Walter and Patty Berglund built for their young family in a slowly gentrifying neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows how neighbors saw the nice Berglunds, but quickly moves on to Patty telling her own story in the third person, a very different tale altogether.
Franzen's not one who will amaze the reader with the beauty of his prose or the delicate intricacies of his language. Where he excels, and excels in a startling, astonishing way, is how he can write show more simultaneously with contempt and with great compassion about his all too human characters. He also is able to detail the way family members love each other and yet can't communicate or willfully miscommunicate with each other. And even as the Berglunds royally mess up their own lives, he allows them moments of forgiveness and grace. show less
The book begins with a summary of the life that Walter and Patty Berglund built for their young family in a slowly gentrifying neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows how neighbors saw the nice Berglunds, but quickly moves on to Patty telling her own story in the third person, a very different tale altogether.
Franzen's not one who will amaze the reader with the beauty of his prose or the delicate intricacies of his language. Where he excels, and excels in a startling, astonishing way, is how he can write show more simultaneously with contempt and with great compassion about his all too human characters. He also is able to detail the way family members love each other and yet can't communicate or willfully miscommunicate with each other. And even as the Berglunds royally mess up their own lives, he allows them moments of forgiveness and grace. show less
When I was at the halfway point of this book, I still wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. It felt dense and depressing, and I wasn’t liking the characters all that much. But when I got two-thirds of the way through, the book—and the characters—started to grow on me. And, as I came to the end, I found myself weeping and filled with admiration for Franzen. By the end, I cared deeply for these characters—these flawed people who are trying their damnedest to make a connection and screwing it up over and over.
But let’s start at the beginning. This is book about a marriage—specifically the flawed and very f$%ked up marriage of Walter and Patty Berglund. We first glimpse the Berglunds through the eyes of their Minnesota neighbors. show more Patty, former college athlete and now a stay-at-home mom, is envied and liked, yet she tends to alienate people. Walter, too nice to dislike, is truly her better half. We get a peek into some of the issues that the Berglund family is facing—with the biggest scandal being the rebellion of their 16-year-old son Joey, who chooses to leave the family home to live with the next-door neighbors.
From there, we read Patty Berglund’s autobiography, suitably entitled “Mistakes Were Made.” Written as a therapeutic exercise during a bout of depression, we get Patty’s view of her childhood and her courtship with Walter. It is in this document that we learn of a critical third party in the Berglund marriage—musician Richard Katz, who is both Walter’s best friend and Patty’s (somewhat) unrequited love interest.
We then get into Walter’s head (as he fights his growing discontent with Patty), Richard’s head (as he struggles with his loyalty to Walter and his attraction to Patty), and Joey’s head (as he struggles to break free from his mother, earn his father’s respect, and become his own person despite the all-encompassing love/albatross of his girlfriend Connie.) Then, when things blow up and fall apart, we revisit Patty as she continues her autobiography. Finally, coming full circle, we glimpse the Berglunds through the eyes of new Minnesota neighbors—and these Berglunds are very very different from the couple we met at the start of the book.
This structure makes for an interesting reading experience. We view each character through several prisms. Patty seen through her eyes is different from the Patty we see through Richard, Walter and Joey’s eyes. As we experiences the Berglund’s marriage, I found myself continually changing my feelings about each character. Midway through, I was discussing the book with Sandy of You’ve GOTTA Read This! and she wrote: “I thought the characters were just a freaking mess. I would have paid money to lock their asses up in a room together just to see who would come out alive. And I often felt slimy after I’d spent some time with them.” I agree with this sentiment, but, as I continued to read, I began to soften towards them … to almost love them. Yes, they are flawed. Yes, they make mistakes. But isn’t this more realistic and truthful? Although I like to pretend otherwise, I’m more like Patty Berglund than I’d like to admit. Her struggle to be a better person is one to which I could often relate. Her belated realization that love was always right there in front of her was a revelation … and one that was rendered so realistically and truthfully that it cut to the core of my heart.
When I read Franzen’s previous novel, The Corrections, I remember feeling alienated from it. Part of it could have been that I wasn’t “ready” for a novel like that. It could also be that Franzen meant you to feel alienated. (My memory of the book is a bit hazy now … some eight years on.) At first, I was feeling the same way with Freedom. It has been heralded as An Important Book. And, like so many other Important Books, I was finding it hard to find my way to its heart. It wasn’t because Franzen’s writing is inaccessible; it just felt distant and cold. But, the more I read, the more involved I got. For me, the moment when I “crossed over” was when Walter experiences some moments of freedom toward the end of the book. At that point, I was invested and involved—and when Franzen rips out Walter’s heart, he ripped out mine too.
Aside from the examination of the Berglund’s marriage, Franzen also uses Freedom to comment on modern American life—making statements (both overtly and covertly) about 9/11, the Iraq War, consumerism, environmental issues, overpopulation, music and celebrity. These social and political issues didn’t feel disingenuous to me, and I never felt like Franzen was getting up on a soapbox at the expense of the story. For me, it made the book more grounded and current. This isn’t a book that takes place in some nebulous timeframe; parts of it take place specifically during 9/11 and the subsequent Iraq war. You know that because the characters deal with those issues (and the other mentioned above) directly and in a hands-on way. I’m sure some readers will be turned off by this aspect of the book, but I found it involving and interesting.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Franzen’s writing. He has been billed as one of our most important modern novelists, and I wouldn’t disagree with that. I marked quite a few phrases and paragraphs that really spoke to me, and I thought I’d excerpt some here.
"She was like an imaginary friend who happened to be visible."
"He was beginning to see, as he hadn’t in St. Paul, that things’ prices weren’t always evident at first glance: that the really big ballooning of the interest charges on his high-school pleasures might still lie ahead of him."
"At the Days Inn in Beckley, they fitted identical keycards into identical doors, fifteen feet from each other, and entered rooms whose identical profound sadness only a torrid illicit liaison could have overcome."
"And she knew better than to stab at an existing wound twice, but either she was the world’s most expert implier, or Joey was the world’s most sensitive inferrer. She had to merely mention an upcoming visit from her old teammate Cathy Schmidt for Joey to hear invidious criticism of Connie."
"Mercifully, the ring turned up in the second of the turds he broke apart. A hardness amid softness, a clean circle within chaos."
"The Dent and Dolberg houses were standing empty now, their windows darkened like the call-holding lights of emergency-hotline callers who’d finally quietly hung up…."
Freedom isn’t an easy read won’t be a good fit for everyone. You might find yourself halfway through and considering giving up. You may wonder “Why am I reading about these horrid people?” But I urge you to read on. I was on the fence for a good majority of the book (and for a 562-page book, that is a long time). But, in the end, I came to love this book and its flawed characters. I got involved and was moved. It was a book where, when I read the last page, I closed it and just sat for a moment out of respect for what I’d just read. I urge you to give it a try. show less
But let’s start at the beginning. This is book about a marriage—specifically the flawed and very f$%ked up marriage of Walter and Patty Berglund. We first glimpse the Berglunds through the eyes of their Minnesota neighbors. show more Patty, former college athlete and now a stay-at-home mom, is envied and liked, yet she tends to alienate people. Walter, too nice to dislike, is truly her better half. We get a peek into some of the issues that the Berglund family is facing—with the biggest scandal being the rebellion of their 16-year-old son Joey, who chooses to leave the family home to live with the next-door neighbors.
From there, we read Patty Berglund’s autobiography, suitably entitled “Mistakes Were Made.” Written as a therapeutic exercise during a bout of depression, we get Patty’s view of her childhood and her courtship with Walter. It is in this document that we learn of a critical third party in the Berglund marriage—musician Richard Katz, who is both Walter’s best friend and Patty’s (somewhat) unrequited love interest.
We then get into Walter’s head (as he fights his growing discontent with Patty), Richard’s head (as he struggles with his loyalty to Walter and his attraction to Patty), and Joey’s head (as he struggles to break free from his mother, earn his father’s respect, and become his own person despite the all-encompassing love/albatross of his girlfriend Connie.) Then, when things blow up and fall apart, we revisit Patty as she continues her autobiography. Finally, coming full circle, we glimpse the Berglunds through the eyes of new Minnesota neighbors—and these Berglunds are very very different from the couple we met at the start of the book.
This structure makes for an interesting reading experience. We view each character through several prisms. Patty seen through her eyes is different from the Patty we see through Richard, Walter and Joey’s eyes. As we experiences the Berglund’s marriage, I found myself continually changing my feelings about each character. Midway through, I was discussing the book with Sandy of You’ve GOTTA Read This! and she wrote: “I thought the characters were just a freaking mess. I would have paid money to lock their asses up in a room together just to see who would come out alive. And I often felt slimy after I’d spent some time with them.” I agree with this sentiment, but, as I continued to read, I began to soften towards them … to almost love them. Yes, they are flawed. Yes, they make mistakes. But isn’t this more realistic and truthful? Although I like to pretend otherwise, I’m more like Patty Berglund than I’d like to admit. Her struggle to be a better person is one to which I could often relate. Her belated realization that love was always right there in front of her was a revelation … and one that was rendered so realistically and truthfully that it cut to the core of my heart.
When I read Franzen’s previous novel, The Corrections, I remember feeling alienated from it. Part of it could have been that I wasn’t “ready” for a novel like that. It could also be that Franzen meant you to feel alienated. (My memory of the book is a bit hazy now … some eight years on.) At first, I was feeling the same way with Freedom. It has been heralded as An Important Book. And, like so many other Important Books, I was finding it hard to find my way to its heart. It wasn’t because Franzen’s writing is inaccessible; it just felt distant and cold. But, the more I read, the more involved I got. For me, the moment when I “crossed over” was when Walter experiences some moments of freedom toward the end of the book. At that point, I was invested and involved—and when Franzen rips out Walter’s heart, he ripped out mine too.
Aside from the examination of the Berglund’s marriage, Franzen also uses Freedom to comment on modern American life—making statements (both overtly and covertly) about 9/11, the Iraq War, consumerism, environmental issues, overpopulation, music and celebrity. These social and political issues didn’t feel disingenuous to me, and I never felt like Franzen was getting up on a soapbox at the expense of the story. For me, it made the book more grounded and current. This isn’t a book that takes place in some nebulous timeframe; parts of it take place specifically during 9/11 and the subsequent Iraq war. You know that because the characters deal with those issues (and the other mentioned above) directly and in a hands-on way. I’m sure some readers will be turned off by this aspect of the book, but I found it involving and interesting.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Franzen’s writing. He has been billed as one of our most important modern novelists, and I wouldn’t disagree with that. I marked quite a few phrases and paragraphs that really spoke to me, and I thought I’d excerpt some here.
"She was like an imaginary friend who happened to be visible."
"He was beginning to see, as he hadn’t in St. Paul, that things’ prices weren’t always evident at first glance: that the really big ballooning of the interest charges on his high-school pleasures might still lie ahead of him."
"At the Days Inn in Beckley, they fitted identical keycards into identical doors, fifteen feet from each other, and entered rooms whose identical profound sadness only a torrid illicit liaison could have overcome."
"And she knew better than to stab at an existing wound twice, but either she was the world’s most expert implier, or Joey was the world’s most sensitive inferrer. She had to merely mention an upcoming visit from her old teammate Cathy Schmidt for Joey to hear invidious criticism of Connie."
"Mercifully, the ring turned up in the second of the turds he broke apart. A hardness amid softness, a clean circle within chaos."
"The Dent and Dolberg houses were standing empty now, their windows darkened like the call-holding lights of emergency-hotline callers who’d finally quietly hung up…."
Freedom isn’t an easy read won’t be a good fit for everyone. You might find yourself halfway through and considering giving up. You may wonder “Why am I reading about these horrid people?” But I urge you to read on. I was on the fence for a good majority of the book (and for a 562-page book, that is a long time). But, in the end, I came to love this book and its flawed characters. I got involved and was moved. It was a book where, when I read the last page, I closed it and just sat for a moment out of respect for what I’d just read. I urge you to give it a try. show less
Jonathan Franzen's prose flows well and he has a gift for writing dialogue that feels natural. He explores his characters, plumbing the depths of their psyches, providing background and motivation for their actions.
Freedom tells the story of Patty and Walter Berglund, following their marriage and relationships with their children, and depicting its spectacular unraveling. A major obstacle to their happiness is the couple’s imbalanced relationship. Walter genuinely loves Patty, but she harbors feelings for Walter’s best friend Richard. (I guess a classic love triangle.) Freedom is also about the choices we make and how they affect our actions, while also acting as a commentary on modern life, dealing with issues such as mankind’s show more impact on the environment, and conservation. It’s a bit on the bleak side. I found myself wondering: is it really possible for human beings to be happy? And does Franzen actually like people?
The main characters in Freedom--Walter, Patty, Richard, and the Berglund children, Joey and Jessica--are all deeply flawed people (even the neighbors and incidental characters are mostly not so good), so much so, that at times, I found them hardly likable, including Walter, the passionate environmentalist. But Franzen gives them enough humanity so that as the reader, I didn’t want to write them off completely. I did find myself in the end rooting for Walter and Patty. The unlikablity of his characters may be due to Franzen’s willingness to take risks as a writer and show real honesty on the part of his characters, laying bare the not-so-nice qualities that most of us keep hidden deep down inside. His characters are exposed, warts and all. This insight into human behavior, and human nature, and his willingness to take risks is what elevates him as a writer, in my opinion.
At nearly 600 pages, this was a long read that, for the most part, kept moving except for a couple of areas where he goes a little too in-depth for my taste into the technical workings of Walter’s work with his environmental trust. I tip my hat to Franzen and recommend Freedom to anyone who likes character-driven literary fiction. show less
Freedom tells the story of Patty and Walter Berglund, following their marriage and relationships with their children, and depicting its spectacular unraveling. A major obstacle to their happiness is the couple’s imbalanced relationship. Walter genuinely loves Patty, but she harbors feelings for Walter’s best friend Richard. (I guess a classic love triangle.) Freedom is also about the choices we make and how they affect our actions, while also acting as a commentary on modern life, dealing with issues such as mankind’s show more impact on the environment, and conservation. It’s a bit on the bleak side. I found myself wondering: is it really possible for human beings to be happy? And does Franzen actually like people?
The main characters in Freedom--Walter, Patty, Richard, and the Berglund children, Joey and Jessica--are all deeply flawed people (even the neighbors and incidental characters are mostly not so good), so much so, that at times, I found them hardly likable, including Walter, the passionate environmentalist. But Franzen gives them enough humanity so that as the reader, I didn’t want to write them off completely. I did find myself in the end rooting for Walter and Patty. The unlikablity of his characters may be due to Franzen’s willingness to take risks as a writer and show real honesty on the part of his characters, laying bare the not-so-nice qualities that most of us keep hidden deep down inside. His characters are exposed, warts and all. This insight into human behavior, and human nature, and his willingness to take risks is what elevates him as a writer, in my opinion.
At nearly 600 pages, this was a long read that, for the most part, kept moving except for a couple of areas where he goes a little too in-depth for my taste into the technical workings of Walter’s work with his environmental trust. I tip my hat to Franzen and recommend Freedom to anyone who likes character-driven literary fiction. show less
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen is a dreadful book. At the time I got it, it was not being touted as an Oprah selection or I would have known better - she and I disagree about books almost always.
I must confess that I actually finished this book in the hope that the disagreeable characters (everyone in the book) would suffer disagreeable ends and I could smirk at their misfortune.
Unlikeable characters, artificial dialogue, unrealistic action. He pens endless examples to prove his points as though his readers just wouldn't get it otherwise. Do we really need eight reasons to believe that wild birds are at risk in high population areas? A half page of rejected names for a new conservationist movement? Reminded me of Dickens being paid by the show more word. When he includes two sections of "diaries" written by one of the characters, there is no change in voice or point of view from the rest of the book.
And my picky dislike - Mr. Franzen *loves* colons as punctuation...except where they belong.
Save your money and your 562 pages worth of time - read something else. show less
I must confess that I actually finished this book in the hope that the disagreeable characters (everyone in the book) would suffer disagreeable ends and I could smirk at their misfortune.
Unlikeable characters, artificial dialogue, unrealistic action. He pens endless examples to prove his points as though his readers just wouldn't get it otherwise. Do we really need eight reasons to believe that wild birds are at risk in high population areas? A half page of rejected names for a new conservationist movement? Reminded me of Dickens being paid by the show more word. When he includes two sections of "diaries" written by one of the characters, there is no change in voice or point of view from the rest of the book.
And my picky dislike - Mr. Franzen *loves* colons as punctuation...except where they belong.
Save your money and your 562 pages worth of time - read something else. show less
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, at least in song. In Jonathan Franzen's novel of the same name, it is a garrulous, possibly incoherent, concept that applies without restraint to everything from existential self-absorption to sexual monomania to political profiteering to small acts of defiance and large acts of indiscretion. In fact, just about anywhere there is a gaping hole in the internal coherence of character or plot, motivation or understanding, Franzen drops in the F-word to backfill the landscape.
If you can ignore the conceptual grandstanding, then the novel consists in following the lives of three people who meet in college and whose life trajectories repeatly bring them into contact with each other over show more many years. They have disparate backgrounds. They have disparate motivations. They have disparate talents. But they share an indefatigable power for love and self harm. Indeed, and rather unfortunately, when you strip away the contingent superficialities they seem to share one voice. Which could mean that Franzen has latched on to the universal but more likely means he doesn't really have different characters here at all.
Amongst the many dissatisfying aspects of this novel, two deserve mention here: the inexplicable moral vacuum found in Joey, the son of two of the main characters, and the level of anger and despair found in each of the main characters. The reader is bludgeoned by rants and hectoring but dubious moralising couched in the form of one-sided conversations. At some point it all seems a bit one note and you can't help losing interest or even caring what happens.
Perhaps this was intended to be one of those weighty novels that capture the Zeitgeist or come to define America. If so, I think it does not succeed. Or perhaps it really is a novel with nothing left to lose. Not recommended. show less
If you can ignore the conceptual grandstanding, then the novel consists in following the lives of three people who meet in college and whose life trajectories repeatly bring them into contact with each other over show more many years. They have disparate backgrounds. They have disparate motivations. They have disparate talents. But they share an indefatigable power for love and self harm. Indeed, and rather unfortunately, when you strip away the contingent superficialities they seem to share one voice. Which could mean that Franzen has latched on to the universal but more likely means he doesn't really have different characters here at all.
Amongst the many dissatisfying aspects of this novel, two deserve mention here: the inexplicable moral vacuum found in Joey, the son of two of the main characters, and the level of anger and despair found in each of the main characters. The reader is bludgeoned by rants and hectoring but dubious moralising couched in the form of one-sided conversations. At some point it all seems a bit one note and you can't help losing interest or even caring what happens.
Perhaps this was intended to be one of those weighty novels that capture the Zeitgeist or come to define America. If so, I think it does not succeed. Or perhaps it really is a novel with nothing left to lose. Not recommended. show less
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One keeps waiting for something that will make these flat characters develop in some way, and finally the Nice Man is struck by a great blow of fate. But rather than write his way through it, Franzen suspends things just before the moment of impact, then resumes Walter’s story six years later—updating us with the glib aside that the event in question “had effectively ended his life.” A show more writer’s got to know his limitations, but this stratagem is clumsy enough to make one want to laugh for the first time in the book. It certainly beats the part where a wedding ring is retrieved from a bowl of feces. show less
added by danielx
added by private library
Franzen is an amateur ethnographer impersonating a fiction writer. His novel is overstuffed with finger-puppet characters and the clutter of contemporary life: there's no reason to know that someone is wearing "Chinese-made sneakers" or that someone else watches Pirates of the Caribbean during a transatlantic flight. Freedom is crammed as well with rants passed off as dialogue and dialogue show more that either serves no narrative purpose or reeks of research done in the lifestyle pages of the New York Times. show less
added by lorax
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Author Information
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Jonathan Franzen was born in Western Springs, Illinois on August 17, 1959. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1981, and went on to study at the Freie University in Berlin as a Fulbright scholar. He worked in a seismology lab at Harvard University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences after graduation. His works include The show more Twenty-Seventh City (1988), Strong Motion (1992), How to Be Alone (2002), and The Discomfort Zone (2006). The Corrections (2001) won a National Book Award and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Freedom (2010) is an Oprah Book Club selection. He also won a Whiting Writers' Award in 1988 and the American Academy's Berlin Prize in 2000. He is also a frequent contributor to Harper's and The New Yorker. In 2015 his title Purity made The New Yort Times and New Zealand Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards
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Contains
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Freedom
- Original title
- Freedom
- Original publication date
- 2010
- People/Characters
- Walter Berglund; Patty Berglund; Joey Berglund; Richard Katz; Jessica Berglund; Connie Mohagan (show all 7); Lalitha
- Important places
- St. Paul, Minnesota, USA; New York, New York, USA; Minnesota, USA; New York, USA; Washington, D.C., USA; West Virginia, USA
- Important events
- September 11 Attacks; Iraqi war
- Epigraph
- Go together, you precious winners all; your exultation partake to everyone. I, an old turtle, will wing me to some withered bough, and there, my mate, that's never to be found again, lament till I am lost.
... (show all) The Winter's Tale ---- - Dedication
- To Susan Golomb & Jonathan Galassi
- First words
- The news about Walter Berglund wasn't picked up locally -- he and Patty had moved away to Washington two years earlier and meant nothing to St. Paul now -- but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city a... (show all)s not to read the New York Times.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)To this day, free access to the preserve is granted only to birds and to residents of Canterbridge Estates, through a gate whose lock combination is known to them, beneath a small ceramic sign with a picture of the pretty young dark-skinned girl after whom the preserve is named.
- Blurbers
- Ferris, Joshua; Morrison, Blake; Leonard, John; Burnside, John; Wallace, David Foster; Rakoff, Joanna (show all 11); Kipen, David; Prose, Francine; Heller, Karen; Miller, Laura; Gates, David
- Original language
- English
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- ISBNs
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