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