During my December travels, I carried it from San Francisco to Nashville to Atlanta to Cape Canaveral and back to San Francisco.

For it is that kind of book, a book like a jug of cough syrup or a bottle of pills, which it is inadvisable or downright hazardous to consume all at once. I took it with me over Christmahanakwanzika and read the 564 page whopper in doses. This book was lent to me by an earnest and lovely friend of mine who was very enthusiastic about it. Gary is rich and self-absorbed, Denise is middle class and seemingly fair-minded, and Chip is broke and irresponsible unless tended. Their progeny are each in a different socio-economic holding pattern, showing that anyone can make it – or not – even in America. Enid is tired of the housewife cell into which she has been cloistered, and is finally starting to get back at Alfred in his doddering old age for all of the love he never showed her. Alfred is a retired workaholic railroad engineer with Parkinson’s Syndrome and abysmal emotional intelligence. The Corrections is a novel about how children grow to adulthood trying to unlive all of the mistakes they believe their parents made.Įnid and Alfred have three children, Gary, Chip, and Denise. It is a city of artery-clogging home cooked food, abandoned railroad infrastructure, and perennial discontent. Jude being a fictional Midwestern town named after the patron saint of lost causes. Enid Lambert, a world-weary, worry-wart matriarch wants her geographically, ideologically, and emotionally disparate family to gather in their hometown for one last Christmas in St.

Jonathan franzen the corrections review