That ride begins in a chilly church parking lot before Christmas (the novel is centered around Advent and Easter). It’s not pretty, but it’s one hell of an interesting and telling ride. Get ready for a massive national comeuppance as Franzen holds a mirror to the Great American Dysfunction of the past five decades. Crossroads, therefore, is the first of a trilogy. Franzen’s fictional family, the Hildebrandts, has so many issues (neuroses, sexual hang-ups, religious quirks, drug addictions), the author has said it will take more than one book to cover everything. And I imagine anyone who picks up Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Crossroads, will have a similar feeling. Can’t you tell they have issues?”īut I couldn’t stop. She would lean over and whisper into my ear, “Stop staring at them. They were punks dragged to a holy tea party. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.When I was a child, huddled in a church pew with my parents and sister on a Sunday, my mother would catch me gawking at a family with unkempt teenagers who displayed all manner of social disdain.

With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.Ī tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. Jonathan Franzen’s novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who’s been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless-unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Download the first chapter of Jonathan Franzen's next novel, Crossroads.

Crossroads by jonathan franzen review