Freedom

FREEDOM
by Jonathan Franzen

 Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2012, LA Times Finalist 2010, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2010, NY Times Finalist 2010, Oprah Book Club 2010

 Date Read: March 22, 2011

 Freedom follows several members of the dysfunctional Berglund family as they struggle with the challenges all families have: fidelity, honesty, parenting, and mortality. Franzen is able to dissect the modern American family and describe in vivid detail what it went wrong, while simultaneously providing hope for the future.

 As an aside, and now that we are several years down the road from the release of this novel, what also makes Freedom remarkable was the press surrounding it. While it does deserve merit in its own right, when Oprah made this the first book she recommended as part of her book club, which I never participated in, Freedom basically got hijacked. 

 Back to the book: Freedom, being true to its name, repeatedly brings up the concept of freedom and the weird relationship Americans have to this word. As Americans, we are told from infancy that America is remarkable because we are "free," yet as time has progressed, instead of referring to the freedoms defined in the Constitution, Americans, I believe, now take freedom as their "...God-given right to engage in mass consumption and lead completely unexamined lives with no regard for the consequences." When fellow Americans call them out and ask for more responsibility and consideration, they get labeled as "liberals" or "intellectuals" and are easily dismissed. I still don't understand how those are bad things.

 I digress yet again. Freedom is an important novel, although The Corrections will forever be what Franzen is remembered for.

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