Winner of the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction
Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award
An American Library Association Notable Book
Jonathan Franzen's third novel, The Corrections, is a great work of art and a grandly entertaining overture to our new century: a bold, comic, tragic, deeply moving family drama that stretches from the Midwest at mid-century to Wall Street and Eastern Europe in the age of greed and globalism. Franzen brings an old-time America of freight trains and civic duty, of Cub Scouts and Christmas cookies and sexual inhibitions, into brilliant collision with the modern absurdities of brain science, home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and the anti-gravity New Economy. With The Corrections, Franzen emerges as one of our premier interpreters of American society and the American soul.
Enid Lambert is terribly, terribly anxious. Although she would never admit it to her neighbors or her three grown children, her husband, Alfred, is losing his grip on reality. Maybe it's the medication that Alfred takes for his Parkinson's disease, or maybe it's his negative attitude, but he spends his days brooding in the basement and committing shadowy, unspeakable acts. More and more often, he doesn't seem to understand a word Enid says.
Trouble is also brewing in the lives of Enid's children. Her older son, Gary, a banker in Philadelphia, has turned cruel and materialistic and is trying to force his parents out of their old house and into a tiny apartment. The middle child, Chip, has suddenly and for no good reason quit his exciting job as a professor at D------ College and moved to New York City, where he seems to be pursuing a "transgressive" lifestyle and writing some sort of screenplay. Meanwhile the baby of the family, Denise, has escaped her disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man--or so Gary hints.
Enid, who loves to have fun, can still look forward to a final family Christmas and to the ten-day Nordic Pleasurelines Luxury Fall Color Cruise that she and Alfred are about to embark on. But even these few remaining joys are threatened by her husband's growing confusion and unsteadiness. As Alfred enters his final decline, the Lamberts must face the failures, secrets, and long-buried hurts that haunt them as a family if they are to make the corrections that each desperately needs.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Jonathan Franzen's exhilarating novel The Corrections tells a spellbinding story with sexy comic brio, and evokes a quirky family akin to Anne Tyler's, only bitter. Franzen's great at describing Christmas homecomings gone awry, cruise-ship follies, self-deluded academics, breast-obsessed screenwriters, stodgy old farts and edgy Tribeca bohemians equally at sea in their lives, and the mad, bad, dangerous worlds of the Internet boom and the fissioning post-Soviet East.
All five members of the Lambert family get their due, as everybody's lives swirl out of control. Paterfamilias Alfred is slipping into dementia, even as one of his inventions inspires a pharmaceutical giant to revolutionize treatment of his disease. His stubborn wife, Enid, specializes in denial; so do their kids, each in an idiosyncratic way. Their hepcat son, Chip, lost a college sinecure by seducing a student, and his new career as a screenwriter is in peril. Chip's sister, Denise, is a chic chef perpetually in hot water, romantically speaking; banker brother Gary wonders if his stifling marriage is driving him nuts. We inhabit these troubled minds in turn, sinking into sorrow punctuated by laughter, reveling in Franzen's satirical eye:
Gary in recent years had observed, with plate tectonically cumulative anxiety, that population was continuing to flow out of the Midwest and toward the cooler coasts.... Gary wished that all further migration [could] be banned and all Midwesterners encouraged to revert to eating pasty foods and wearing dowdy clothes and playing board games, in order that a strategic national reserve of cluelessness might be maintained, a wilderness of taste which would enable people of privilege, like himself, to feel extremely civilized in perpetuity.Franzen is funny and on the money. This book puts him on the literary map. --Tim Appelo
". . . large-hearted and merciless, The Corrections is a testament to the range and depth of pleasures great fiction affords." (David Foster Wallace)
"A literary masterpiece . . . thrilling, heartening, and inspiring about seeing life revealed so accurately, so transparently -- and finally, so forgivingly . . . Dazzling." (Francine Prose, O magazine)
"It creates the illusion of giving a complete account of a world . . . it temporarily eclipses whatever else we may have read." (David Gates, The New York Times Book Review)
"An energetic, brooding, open-hearted and funny novel." (Chris Lehmann, The Washington Post)
"The Corrections . . . renders its mysteries with the fine filament and moral nuance they require . . ." (Richard Lacayo, Time)
"By turns funny and corrosive, portentous and affecting, The Corrections . . . shows us two generations of an American family struggling . . ." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
FREE
Within U.S.A.
Shipping:
US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Seller: SecondSale, Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
Condition: Acceptable. Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00043986437
Quantity: 7 available
Seller: SecondSale, Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
Condition: Good. Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Seller Inventory # 00056089143
Quantity: 15 available
Seller: Gulf Coast Books, Memphis, TN, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Fair. Seller Inventory # 0374129983-4-21090030
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: BookHolders, Towson, MD, U.S.A.
Condition: Good. [ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ][ Ships Daily ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: NONE ] [ Writing: NONE ] [ Edition: first ] Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub Date: 9/15/2001 Binding: Hardcover Pages: 576 first edition. Seller Inventory # 4122366
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: BookHolders, Towson, MD, U.S.A.
Condition: Good. [ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ][ Ships Daily ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: NONE ] [ Writing: SOME ] [ Edition: first ] Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub Date: 9/15/2001 Binding: Hardcover Pages: 576 first edition. Seller Inventory # 5398126
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: BookHolders, Towson, MD, U.S.A.
Condition: Good. [ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ][ Ships Daily ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: NONE ] [ Writing: NONE ] [ Edition: first ] Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub Date: 9/15/2001 Binding: Hardcover Pages: 576 first edition. Seller Inventory # 5866255
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: BookHolders, Towson, MD, U.S.A.
Condition: Good. [ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ][ Ships Daily ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: NONE ] [ Writing: NONE ] [ Edition: first ] Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pub Date: 9/15/2001 Binding: Hardcover Pages: 576 first edition. Seller Inventory # 5966111
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: The Book Cellar, LLC, Nashua, NH, U.S.A.
hardcover. Condition: Poor. Has heavy shelf & corner wear, but still a good reading copy. Does not have dust jacket. A portion of your purchase of this book will be donated to non-profit organizations.Over 1,000,000 satisfied customers since 1997! Choose expedited shipping (if available) for much faster delivery. Delivery confirmation on all US orders. Seller Inventory # 10444390
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: Books for Life, LAUREL, MD, U.S.A.
Condition: acceptable. Book is in acceptable condition. May have shelf wear, edge wear, and spine wear, but a very readable copy. May not come with supplemental materials if applicable. Does not include original dustcover jacket. Possibly Ex Library Copy. Seller Inventory # LFM.3EDA
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: Hawking Books, Edgewood, TX, U.S.A.
Condition: Acceptable. Missing dust jacket; otherwise in excellent condition. Meets the acceptable condition guidelines. Has wear. Five star seller - Buy with confidence!. Seller Inventory # X0374129983X4
Quantity: 1 available