The Corrections

From the author of ‘Freedom’, a richly realistic and darkly hilarious masterpiece about a family breakdown in an age of easy fixes.

After fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity, and their children have long since fled for the catastrophes of their own lives. As Alfred’s condition worsens and the Lamberts are forced to face their secrets and failures, Enid sets her heart on one last family Christmas.

Bringing the old world of civic virtue and sexual inhibition into violent collision with the era of hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare and globalised greed, ‘The Corrections’ confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of the most brilliant interpreters of the American soul.

Reviews

‘A book which is funny, moving, generous, brutal and intelligent, and which poses the ultimate question: what life is for? And that is as much as anyone could ask' Blake Morrison, Guardian

‘Intelligent, compellingly readable, funny and above all generous spirited, it is a rare thing, a modern novel with both head and heart’ Daily Mail

‘Jonathan Franzen has built a powerful novel out of the swarming consciousness of a marriage, a family, a whole culture’ Don DeLillo

'Impossible to dislike, an unpretentious page-turner' Zadie Smith

'Compelling. A pleasure from beginning to end. Franzen, in one leap, has put himself into the league of Updike and Roth' Evening Standard

About the author

Jonathan Franzen won the National Book Award in 2001 for ‘The Corrections’. He is the author of three other critically acclaimed novels, ‘The Twenty-Seventh City’, ‘Strong Motion’ and most recently ‘Freedom’, as well as two works of non-fiction: ’How to be Alone’ and ‘The Discomfort Zone’. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.