
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.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario