Freedom, a Novel by Jonathan Franzen

Eight or nine years after Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" he is back with a new blockbuster, "Freedom."
Freedom is the story of the Berglund family of St. Paul and Hibbing, MN.  About half the book is written as a therapy exercise, a third-person autobiography of the life of Patty Berglund, a 45 year old housewife who is forced to go back to the workplace when she is thrown out of the house for cheating with her husband's best friend, a semi-successful rock star named Richard Katz from New Jersey. 

Patty, her husband, Walter, and Katz met as University of Minnesota students in the late 70s or early 80s.  Patty was a women's basketball star.  Walter was an environmentalist and engineer, and Richard was the budding musician.  Walter and Richard were room mates.  Richard encouraged the relationship between Patty and Walter, but secretly Patty always was more attracted to Richard even though she recognized Walter would be the more stable provider.  She seems to spend a lifetime being depressed about her marriage, her secret feelings for Richard, and the lives of her children, Jessica and Joey.

Eventually the family moves from St. Paul so that Walter can work as the executive director of an environmental non-profit called the Cerulian Mountain Trust, an organization dedicated to saving habitat for a particular breed of warbler. The Trust is really a front for a conservative coalition of coal mining and defense contractor interests who want to garner support for their anti-environmental activities by appearing to be the good guys.  Walter and his assistant, Lelithia, meanwhile, are using the Trust as a way of pushing their own pet project for zero population growth.

Every character in the book is described, psycho-analyzed, actions discussed in tremendous detail, and motivations analyzed until the reader feels there is absolutely nothing else to know about each character. At times that detail gets quite tedious.  However, every detail of action and every set of motivations is so consistent to the family background and personality of each character that it feels very much like the reader has stepped into the middle of these lives and is living them along with the characters.  They all seem so real, and it is so easy to identify either personally with one or more of the characters, or it is easy to feel as if you know someone just like them.  The reader watches helplessly as the family falls apart.  One wishes that we could give a good shake to each one of them to prevent a lot of the pain and turmoil that happens; but we are in fact helpless to prevent what happens because we are only voyeurs on the outside looking in on their lives.

I'm glad that in the end we have quite a bit of  closure as various characters come to their senses and learn to forgive and stop hurting each other.  There is redemption in the end-- and that could have been the name of the book almost as reasonably as "Freedom."  Another name that could have been used is "Mistakes were made," the title that Patty uses for her autobiography.

The word "Freedom" does, however, describe a continuing theme.  Each character has free will to determine what they will do and how they will act in given situations.  The people around them always let the other members of the family make their own mistakes and triumph with their own successes, even when they disapprove or even shun a loved one for following free will.  There are many other thematic ties to the concept of freedom in the book, even though it seems at times that everyone is predestined to particular roles and to react in particular ways because of their family history, socio-economic class, and genetic make-up. Because the concept of freedom is explored throughout the book it really is the most appropriate title for the book.


The book is dense and long.  It will not be everyone's cup of tea.  It is one of the more thought-provoking and complex books that I have read in the past couple years, and for that my brain appreciates the exercise.

Liz Nichols