The Corrections is a novel written by Jonathan Franzen. Released in 2001, it recounts the lives of a family in the Midwest of America.
Characters[]
- Enid Lambert - the mother of the Lambert children
- Alfred Lambert - the Lambert patriarch
- Gary Lambert - the elder child of the Lambers
- Chip Lambert - the middle child of the Lamberts
- Denise Lambert - the youngest child of the Lambers
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
"The Corrections" is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century - a 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 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.
Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, "The Corrections" brings 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 healthcare, and globalised greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Virgin Suicides | Jeffrey Eugenides | 1993 | A novel with similar themes of a dysfunctional family |
| The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt | 2013 | A novel with a similar theme of a dysfunctional family |
| Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides | 2002 | A novel with similar themes |
| White Teeth | Zadie Smith | 2000 | A novel with similar themes |
| Rabbit, Run | John Updike | 1960 | A novel with a similar theme of a dysfunctional family |
| Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace | 1996 | A novel by one of Franzen's contemporaries with similar themes of a dysfunctional family |
| American Pastoral | Philip Roth | 1997 | A novel with similar themes |
| We Need to Talk About Kevin | Lionel Shriver | 2003 | A novel with a similar theme of a dysfunctional family |
| The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger | 1951 | A novel with a similar theme of a dysfunctional family |
Sources[]
- Goodreads