Freedom by Jonathan Franzen - Book Review

Freedom is, in some ways, the ultimate lyrical realist novel. This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course. You can quickly tell that you are in safe hands; every sentence will go down smoothly, and there will never be an ugly locution or an egregious cliché unless the author wants there to be one. Such moments as pull the reader up short occur when the plot demands we be pulled up short, as when there is an unexpected phone call or email and we have to wait for a while to find out what happened about it. (The structure of this novel made me think of someone pulling up a pair of skiing trousers, first on one side, then on the other, until it all fits snugly.) The opening lines seem a little throat-clearing – we hear about someone called Walter Berglund, who used to live in Minnesota but then moved to Washington, and who has since in some controversial way made the front page of the New York Times. The rest of the book is a long, leisurely stroll, with quite a few diversions, that will take us to that New York Times story, explain it, and then reveal its aftermath.

So the opening 28 pages show us Walter and Patty Berglund, pioneering gentrifiers of a run-down district of St Paul, Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes and very long and cold winters, asking themselves the kind of questions that the ethical-minded have to wrestle with ("Was bulgur really necessary?" is my favourite). They have two children, one of whom, Joey, is doted on excessively by Patty; he turns into a cool, repellently selfish Republican later on, but in this opening section he is a precocious smart-ass who drives his parents nearly crazy with his inappropriate maturity and heartbreaking independence.

But then we are launched into a 160-page "autobiography" of Patty, a memoir called "Mistakes Were Made" ("Composed At Her Therapist's Suggestion"), in which Patty refers to herself either in the third person or as "the autobiographer". In it we learn a few things from the inside, most importantly that Patty was raped when a teenager, but that her parents, local political bigwigs, advised her not to proceed with any case because the rapist was the son of an even bigger wig.

This story is told very well indeed, with just the right inflection to ramp up our outrage and see why Patty cuts off almost all contact with her parents; but we wonder at times whether this really is Patty telling the story or simply Franzen being clever, or not quite clever enough. You might recall this kind of thing from Ian McEwan's Atonement, where the (smart) author ventriloquises for a (not so smart) character. (There's a nod to Atonement much later on, when Joey "struggle[s] to interest himself in its descriptions of rooms and plantings". Cheeky.)

But what this novel really wants to be is War and Peace (there are numerous references). It would, however, settle for being Middlemarch, especially in the way that its characters tend, with some wiggle room, not to escape the labels they have been given. Cranky eco-nut, cool alt-rock guy, vile corrupt polluting Cheney crony, Republican whizz-kid with shiny loafers, and so on. And indeed, as in all novels queuing up for Great American Novel status, you do get the sensation of reading a 600-page shopping list. Fight between principles and realpolitik? Check. Cross-generational strife? Check. Fighting over wills? Check. Redneck vs city slicker? Check. Infidelity? Check. Goodness, there's even a spot of anal sex. Is the very genre conservative? Franzen is a Democrat, duh, but there are more than a couple of unironic suggestions that what Patty needs is a job; and also, not to put too fine a point on it, a good seeing-to; when she does get one it really perks her up.

This is not to belittle Freedom. As an engine delivering a certain kind of entertainment – wise, expansive, knowing – it's unbeatable.

* This review is extracted fron The Guardian and written by Nicholas Lezard.