UGH. Just what you'd expect. Who cares about these people?

This book is long, but amazing! I couldn't get enough

Very detailed book, sometime much ado about nothing with the pacing a tad too slow. It was just getting nowhere. Four key moments: the death of Lalitha: a piece removed for a "better" ending(?); the (comic?) return of Patty at the end (a kind of redemption(?) putting everything in its proper place?; the adventure of Bobby the Cat (comic relief?); and lastly, the transformation of Walther's property into a small but "secured" bird preserve. There the book ends, and life continues.

The novel starts intensely and seems tangled and humourless, but stay with it - it gets better and better and ends with such gentleness, purity and wisdom that it will make you weep. Every bit as impactful as The Corrections. I love Jonathan Franzen's rich writing.

Not my favourite book I have ever read. Well written, but not fiction enough, yet not non fiction enough. Too much like being in a family for me.

A job of a good author will make you feel about a litany of emotions while reading his/her book. You empathize with or at least try to understand some of his/her characters. It takes a great writer to enthrall you in his world and simultaneously make you hate majority of his characters. I found not one redeeming flaw or good quality nor could I empathize with the disastrous, demeaning, and self-squandering characters of <i>Freedom</i>. The first half of this book I enjoyed reading. Patty Berglund (nee Emerson) writing's of (often dreary and exasperating) her life, her family, Eliza, Richard (and her love-affair with him) her actions and the impact or little-to-no impact; she had on her children/husband was what made me keep actively seeking out her self-destitution in the pages of Franzen's words. I didn't really care to hear the thoughts of Richard (who I felt was better as a shadowy figure and should have remained so) in the rest of the half of this book. Joey seems like someone that needs to be slapped repeatedly. I don't see why he is painted like a God to the women of the book, when he is little more then a brat with a over indulged ego. The one person I did like was Walter. Even though he supposedly shilled out his soul in the middle of the book to people who were only going to use him as a figure-head, so they could tear apart the land for their own personal gain. I like Franzen's writing style, even though at certain paragraph's it gets confusing and you have to reread it to make sure that you didn't confuse certain characters inner monologues with their actually spoken-dialogue. I look foreword to finishing the entire thing. I actually want to know the end conclusion.

For our December book discussion!

I could not put this book down! Read it in 3 days and wished it would go on forever.

This book was excellent. The characters are all relatable and so real, I felt I knew them by the end of the book. There weren't too many that I liked. Self-centered, crotchety, angry, entitled, strident. But the clash of all their needs and desires makes an interesting and riveting drama. Biggest complaint is that the daughter doesn't get more time in the story. She is the one likable character.

I find it interesting that a reader may find the characters "contrived" - coming from the exact setting of this book (urban and rural Minnesota in the 1980's & 90's) the characters felt pretty authentic to me. Excellent, effortless read.