Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
OMG, too LOOOOOOOONG!!!
Franzen is still aiming to craft the perfect Great American Novel, and he is just the guy for it: His new trilogy (of which "Crossroads" is only the first part) should probably be read with his infamous essay "Perchance to Dream: In an Age of Images, a Reason to Write Novels" in mind. While dissecting the roots of the crisis of the novel (an argument that had several connections to DFW's Infinite Jest and his essay "E Unibus Pluram", and we'll come back to that later), Franzen stated that he wan...
Thank God for Jonathan Franzen. His new novel, “Crossroads,” is the first of a planned trilogy modestly called “A Key to All Mythologies.” With its dazzling style and tireless attention to the machinations of a single family, “Crossroads” is distinctly Franzenesque, but it represents a marked evolution, a new level of discipline and even a deeper sense of mercy.This time around, the celebrated chronicler of the Way We Live Now is exploring the Way We Lived Then — notably the early 1970s. And the...
I’ve always loved Jonathan Franzen’s fiction, but Crossroads is on a whole other level, even from contemporary classics like The Corrections and Freedom. It’s one of the most absorbing and probing analyses of the American family that I’ve ever read. And while it’s the first part of a projected trilogy – called, perhaps tongue in cheek, A Key To All Mythologies (a reference to Casaubon’s incomplete opus in Middlemarch) – this novel stands on its own as an intriguing and penetrating look into some...
Terrific first book of a trilogy- a series in the making…Loved the characterization, the social and psychological aspects of humanity and history …A BIG FAMILY STORY… looking at goodness, morality, faith, God, religion, covering intimate themes galore…Marriage, parenthood, sibling individuality, sibling relationships, love sex, boyfriends, girlfriends, infatuations, adultery, humiliation, coming-of-age, drugs, music, Church, a religious youth group, ….and as Bob Dylan might have said…. Times, th...
Really loved it, and was surprised by it, and am excited to hear what people think of it. It has its strange moments, and some regressive ones, but also incredible sequences, and the Marion character, specifically, fascinated me. Franzen has a knack for intertwined family novels, and this one, while not up to the level of THE CORRECTIONS, is great. Excited for part 2!
First book of the year turned out to be a 5-star read!!
This novel might easily be titled The Lying life of Adults. Like Ferrante's novel it's about a dysfunctional family. For me Ferrante's novel was better, more pressing and incisive, closer to the heart and I began to ask myself if I found it a better novel simply because I'm European and not American and so could relate more intimately with Ferrante's world. There are moments on the news here when you realise how out of kilter America and Europe have become. Mostly this has to do with how politic...
Jonathan Franzen is in peak form, and also back in familiar territory, with this mid-Western family drama set in the early 1970s. This is apparently the first installment in a planned trilogy, and I am certainly eager to continue the story in Franzen's future volumes. The family in question is the Hildebrandt family, consisting of parents (Russ and Marion) and four children (Clem, Becky, Perry, and Judson). The story is told from five points of view, i.e., from the perspectives of each of the Hi...
Two things Jonathan Franzen can’t be accused of: lack of humor and lack of words. This book is teeming with both. His humor is subdued where his loquaciousness is glaring but Franzen is an author who knows where he’s going with both of them. If you trust him enough to go along for the ride the essence of the book will stay with you long after the particulars of the narrative have vanished from memory. I finished this a couple of days ago and already the plot, which comes dangerously close to th...
My first read of 2022 and my first time reading Jonathan Franzen—what a way to kick-off the new year!Crossroads serves as the first installment in Franzen's trilogy of novels that will presumably trace the Hildebrandt family from the 1970s, in which this novel takes place, to the present day (i.e. the 2020s?). We begin in 1971. The place: New Prospect, Illinois. Russ Hildrebrandt is the patriarch of his family of six, as well as assistant pastor and recently disgraced youth group leader. He's be...
“Clem could see a problem with Camus… he assumed the existence of a unitary consciousness that rationally deliberated moral choices when in fact a person’s real motives were complex and uncontrollable (p.114).”Crossroads is the story of a dysfunctional family on the brink. The family, the Hilderbrandts, father, Russ, an assistant Pastor in an affluent white suburb of Chicago, mother, Marion, housewife, and editor of her husband’s sermons and four children, three of whom are in their teens. The s...
So well-done, engaging, unpredictable, likeable, at times profound, moving at times, extraordinarily well-characterized, dramatic (plot-propelling conflict ever-arising), with stretches of believable, often religious/morality-related interiority, steady third-person focused on a Hildebrandt family member per chapter, dealing with all the vices and virtues of life, patient narrative pace that's nevertheless always revved up in veering, vervy language, sentences so often starting with some clause
Loved the book. I listened to the audio from the library! I’m hoping to buy this off my Amazon wishlist as my April bday present!! I’m trying to con friends and family to fork out the $50 gift cards since I’ll be 50 😳 (I might use my points to go ahead and get it and put it right on my bookshelf)!! I loved these characters even with all of their flaws!!! This story covers so many things and that’s why I love it. Different people have flaws as I’ve said, do horrible things, different race issues,...
75th book of 2021.4.5. This is Franzen's new novel, which will be published 5th October '21. I'll write a short review for this soon but as I read a proof copy, I am not allowed to quote from it yet. Maybe when October rolls around I will return and write a full review as I want to. But for now: Franzen has somehow managed to write a family saga filled with the same old problems but nail it. This was a pleasure to read, a 600-pager that barely falters. Wonderful characters, wonderful dialogue, w...
Franzen is a master of intricate novels about messed-up families. Crossroads is both eloquent and frustrating. As a reader, my relationship to each character vacillated and deepened as I learned more about their flaws, motivations - and faith. I was most drawn to Marion, and will read the next book in the planned trilogy for her. Franzen writes beautifully and generously but often uses two sentences when one would do. I was more aware of the page count than I like to be in a 500+ page book.
Despite our most recent generation’s mangling and subsequent misappropriation of the word, I’m shocked at how “literally” my daughter takes everything these days. Upon further thought I shouldn’t be that shocked, really; after all, she’s six. To understand the grey areas which fall between the proverbial black and white would simply be too much for her little brain to handle. It hasn’t been without effort, however. Foolhardy endeavor though it may be, my wife and I have been teaching her that al...