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From Australia

Fiona Steinberg

I ended up just skimming over the more boring bits. I won't be seeking out any more ...

Reviewed in Australia on 12 January 2016

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This was such a long winded, wordy book! It took absolutely forever to read, and what could have been said in 200 pages, took 600. I ended up just skimming over the more boring bits. I won't be seeking out any more of his work, that's for sure!

One person found this helpful

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From other countries

Kym Hamer

Not for me at all

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 June 2018

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Good heavens what a trawl this book turned out to be. The bones of a good story were definitely there but they just got buried...by what I'm not entirely sure. Too much detail maybe? Also the occasional switching to the voice of the auto-biographer was weird and off-putting. Not for me at all and most likely my last attempt at Franzen.

Amazon Customer

Not worth a read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 June 2017

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Just so poor. No story to speak of and feels trashy. Such a let down after his amazing first work.

Martin Brennan

Never judge a book by its blurbs

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 January 2012

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This book is far too long for what Mr Franzen has to say. In the first 150 pages there is some clunky dialogue and even clunkier - if still technically correct - syntax. That gets better as the book goes on - and on. One of the reasons for the inordinate length of the novel is Mr Franzen's penchant for angst. The reader gets advance warning of a character's angst as it is signalled by page long paragraphs saying the same thing over and over with different words. Advice to young people: skip these paragraphs.

The one sympathetic character is Patty but even she becomes borne on a sluggish tide of inertia, unable to exert any influence her own life far less on the people she loves. And who does she choose to love? Well there's Walter her once and future husband. He's very bright and idealistic - so we hear. But if he's all that bright and all that idealistic, how come he's duped by the first corporation boss he meets.

Patty also loves Walter's best friend, the ageing rock star, Richard. Richard is vain, self-absorbed and self-indulgent to a fault. That's more or less it for Richard except he too has angst and there are plenty of long paragraphs to prove it. Patty's son, Joey, is another piece of work. In his mid-teens he leaves Patty and Walter to live next door with a child one year his junior. This menage is presided over by the girl's mother, Carfol, and her red-neck beau. Where Joey now gets his money, clothes and food is never divulged. Joey's sexual fantasies include coprophagy; he is very intelligent; a government think tank employee: and he is complicit in a miltary supplies scam netting him $0.8 m - all before he is twenty. And another thing - Joey too has angst.

Joey has a sister, Jessica. We don't get to find out much about Jessica. It certainly can't be that her story is too repellent. If that was the case she would have had star billing. Anyway, Jessica has no angst so she gets my vote for Freedom favourite character.

4 people found this helpful

Miezekatze

Der ultimative kontemporäre Gesellschaftsroman mit sinnentleertem Einworttitel

Reviewed in Germany on 18 April 2014

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Den enthusiastischen Rezensionen kann ich mich nicht anschließen - dieses Machwerk will zuviel!

Die Innenwelten von Patty und Walter Berglund werden bis in die finsterste Ecke ausgeleuchtet, wo man noch den allerletzten Staubmäusen zugucken kann. Alles, aber auch alles wird im Buch aufgearbeitet, verbalisiert und seziert. Der Detailreichtum war mir schlicht zuviel; Franzen bettet seinen Beziehungs- und Familienroman in alles an Außenwelt ein, was es gibt, und lässt sein Personal über Irak, 9/11, Kohlebergbau, Artensterben und Bevölkerungsexplosion aus jeder Perspektive bis zum Erbrechen referieren. Richard Katz und der Sohn haben neben Patty und Walter noch eigene Erzählstimmen (warum nicht auch Tochter Jessica?), die dann aber irgendwann weg sind. Der Romaneinstieg mit den Wahrnehmungen von Patty und Walters Nachbarn fand ich seltsam und auch irreführend, und bei den Perspektiven hat mich nur Pattys Autobiografie streckenweise gefangen nehmen können. Das flache Ende hat mich nicht überzeugt, und weshalb ich eine ganze Hör-CD lang Walters Kampf mit Kater Bobby verfolgen durfte, ist mir auch nicht klar.

Weniger wäre hier mehr gewesen. Hab aber wieder Lust bekommen, "Middlemarch" oder "Die Buddenbrooks" zu lesen. Wenigstens bekommt Patty in unseren aufgeklärten Zeiten ein Happy End, Effie Briest musste noch versterben. 2 Sterne.

PS. Das ungekürzte englischsprachige Hörbuch ist gut gelesen von David Ledoux.

4 people found this helpful

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kairda

Kommt lange nicht an die Korrekturen heran

Reviewed in Germany on 27 October 2012

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Ich habe die Korrekturen vor einiger Zeit gelesen und sehr gemocht.
Um so gespannter war ich auf Freedom - wo doch zahlreiche Kritiken geradezu euphorisch sind.
Leider hat mich das Buch enttäuscht - es ist langatmig, die Personen werden zwar genau beschrieben, bleiben aber trotzdem blass. Vor Allem handeln sie nicht wirklich nachvollziehbar. Ich habe das Buch nach 75% beendet, mich hat es einfach gar nicht mehr interessiert. Schade.
Positiv ist natürlich zu erwähnen, dass Franzen hervorragend schreibt. Ein echter Autor eben. Mich hat die Geschichte aber eben gar nicht gepackt.

5 people found this helpful

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Riccohb

Relentless

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 January 2016

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I hated this book.

The problem for me was that every character without exception is self-absorbed and neurotic and never stops complaining. Not one of them - even the minor characters that are there and gone inside a couple of pages - has a single redeemable feature. Consequently I couldn't bring myself to like any of them and therefore didn't care what happened to them. So much so that I just skimmed the last 150 pages or so and I'd struggle to say what actually happened in the end.

Every one of the 600-odd pages of this book is just one or another of the characters endlessly whining. They whine about their parents, they whine about their past and they whine about their life. They whine when things don't go their way and then, every time something does go their way they decide they didn't want it anyway and preferred things they were in the first place. So they whine about it. After a while it just gets unbearable.

It's a shame because Franzen can obviously write.

6 people found this helpful

Alessandra F.

"Freedom is a pain in the ass"

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 January 2012

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"Freedom is a pain in the ass": I suppose it's somehow ironic that this sentence arrived just as I started thinking that very same thing about the book itself, and there were still more than 300 pages to go. I'm afraid I have to agree with most of the negative reviews of this novel. As a previous enthusiastic reader of "The Corrections", I bought it full of expectations. Now that I've finished it, I can say that I've probably wasted a few good hours of my time. First of all, "Freedom" is way too long and too repetitive. You almost have the impression of reading a draft rather than a final and polished book. You come across characters that, in the overall picture, appear absolutely superfluous. So even when you read some interesting part or remark, you already know that the penalty to pay is reading some 20-30 redundant pages in which it is "diluted". I do normally enjoy family sagas, but "Freedom" tends to be more of a soap than a saga. Personally, I was also very bored by all the political "detours", but I admit this could be ascribed to my lack of knowledge about some aspects of American life. Finally, there are a few enjoyable and well written parts, but overall they're not enough to lead me to recommend this book. Too long to give it a try... if you can avoid it!

3 people found this helpful

Yo mismo

Wouldn't read it again

Reviewed in Spain on 21 February 2013

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Interested by critics about the novel and Franzen, I tried this one. It's not exactly bad, but the characters are far from interesting or real, and one would probably like to kick their butts one by one. Why this is called Freedom is beyond me.

One person found this helpful

maria soledad ortin rull

Otro más

Reviewed in Spain on 17 March 2013

Verified Purchase

Este libro me ha aburrido solemnemente. Lo he enconttrado repetitivo y que trata de un tema que no representa ninguna novedad. No entiendo como tiene tanta fama.

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5 star		53%
4 star		23%
3 star		11%
2 star		6%
1 star		7%

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