4.5 stars

If you want to read this till the end, you pretty much have to be stubborn.

If you are a Franzen fan, and I am, this is one of the best. He deeply buries his diatribe against the internet (it's akin to totalitarian communism!) in a juicy tale with characters you'll love or hate, but never be bored by. He's been known to say he thinks of his work as comic novels, so bear that in mind when the plot veers toward extremes. But I am once again wowed by his ability to weave a complex tale so of our times.

This book has been sitting on my shelf for a while now and I finally picked it up. I was a little wary because my mom hated this book and couldn't even finish it. But I'm glad I finally read it. This was my first Frazen novel and it was quite good. The story was pretty inters testing, although I found certain viewpoints/sections better than others. At times, the dialogue was a little pretentious between characters, as nuclear disarmament talk and inner character monologues tend to be.

I think the reason my mom didn't like it (besides the occasion graphic descriptions of sex and violence) was this is not a book where you can only read a couple pages a night. I finished the book in a week, reading 100 pages at a time and with that, I found myself truly invested in the characters and storyline.

I will admit right off the bat I don't have the highest opinion of Jonathan Franzen to begin with, so reading two of his books in one year was a bit of a stretch for me. But, despite having read The Corrections a few months ago, I went ahead and jumped right in with Purity. Ugh. Overall, I didn't mind the main character, Purity aka Pip. And, the ending of the story at least eased my immense irritation with the book. But most of the rest of the characters were tiresome and insufferable. I don't know what Franzen has against mothers, but he made them all a wreck in this book. Andreas Wolf, the Julian Assange-esque, character in this book was gross and reminded me a lot of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. He was full of himself and his intelligence, murdered someone for the "greater good" and while not feeling guilty about the crime wrestled with the secret the rest of his life. He also had the romantic relationship that while under stress from the murder seemed like everything to him, but once the danger had passed and he had settled into normal life he became annoyed and disgusted by her which is exactly what I would argue would have happened with Raskolnikov and Sonya had Crime and Punishment continued after he had finished serving his sentence. I also found the language during sexual related scenes very aggressive and in conflict with the tone of the book. This book is just full of itself and I did not enjoy.

3.5 stars

The family dynamic is riveting. The triple narration engrossing. Loved it more than Freedom and just as much as The Corrections!

Some foundational, Franzen tropes... the doting, overbearing mother who just wants the best for her children; the wandering, I-want-this-ohsorry-I-want-that-oh-for-fucksake-I-want-I-want-I-want-I-have-no-idea-what-I-want protagonist; the surly, morally correct/morally conflicted older male; a heavy dose of obscene narcissism... you get the idea.

Yet, as is his blessed calling card, the prose sing. While his characters are overtly Franzenistic tropes, it does not take away from their honesty, nor does the above hurt the storytelling. As I was reading the book, I stopped on more than one occasion to opine to my wife how I was simultaneously delighted by the deftness of Mr. Franzen's talent as writer and storyteller and how jealous I was of his prodigious skill.

He has a way of making his somewhat unsavory characters still loveable and complex.

There are those that consider Mr. Franzen a male shovenist and I guess there is some of that ringing in 'Purity' as well. However, aren't males often shovenists, closeted or overt? And in some cases, aren't those characters, though sometimes unsavory, also somewhat redeemable in their own weird way? For what it's worth, 3 of the main characters in this novel are women and other than Pip's mother (1 of the 3), the other two are shown to be the strongest moral characters in the story.

Some see Franzen's brand of storytelling as a privileged rendering of his predilections and hypothesize at his maligned contempt for everyone, fictional characters and real readers alike. I will admit that I don't see that. Franzen may position himself as the mature moralist whose place atop the literary pantheon allows him to bypass the likes of Twitter and Facebook (icky, self-indulgent forms of narcissism in and of themselves, Franzen might say), but to me he is not unlike many other fifty-somethings who see the likes of social media as an absurd trade for face-to-face relationship building. Is that opinion narrow, missing the mark of what our complex digital world has become? Of course! But to those who would moralize themselves about such a position, I would say what I say to many people who find themselves reading/partaking in some form of entertainment with the full understanding of what they are getting from the artist. If you don't like that artist, read something else. You'll be missing out, but that's your decision.

I wish I had read Roxane Gay's review before picking this up, because I largely agreed with her assessment of the book as disappointing. I so much wanted this to be an interesting and engaging take on modern relationships and issues of our times.

But instead, I got a lot of misrepresentations of feminism: a woman forcing her husband to pee sitting down, and he in turn rebelling by secretly pissing in the sink. . . Another young woman in high school being sexually abused by her step-father and lots of consideration of her wanting/liking it?!

Not to mention the two megalomaniacal characters (Anabel and Andreas) who were painted as some vague kind of mentally ill (as infuriatingly self-involved and moralistically rigid).

There was a lot here too about privilege-- rejecting it, but having it there waiting still. Anabel rejected her family's wealth because it was tainted in the "River of Meat." And lives, and raises her daughter, in self-ascribed poverty. Yet so easily persuaded by her grown daughter to start to tap into her inheritance.

I felt Franzen was trying to hard to include simplistic critiques on the Internet, projects like Wikileaks and gender politics, all while maintaining a miogynistic, privileged and ableist perspective.

Well, this was my first Franzen book, and I was disappointed! I still want to try Freedom and The Corrections, but I am hoping they won't follow a similar style as this one (sounds from the reviews like they do though). Neither the story nor the characters drew me in. In fact, they are all pretty much downright unlikable. Is that a Franzen thing? I found it to be a little bit of an arrogant writing style.

I finished it to see how it would end but it was not satisfying...I still am not sure what the point of this story is.