Freedom

The new frontiers of old St. Paul were Patty and Walter Berglund, the hands-on parents, the gentrifiers, the Whole Foods generation's avant-garde. With her ability to direct traffic and provide advice on how to encourage the local police force to carry out their duties, Patty was the perfect kind of neighbor. She was Walter's ideal wife and an incredibly well-mannered mother. Alongside Walter, an environmental attorney, commuting bike, and all-around family guy, she was contributing in little ways to the betterment of society.

However, in the year 2000, the Berglund family has vanished from view. What is the reason for their son's relocation to live with the adamantly Republican family next door? What made Walter decide to work for Big Coal? What on earth is outré rocker Richard Katz, adversary and closest buddy of Walter's in college, still doing in this picture? Above all, what is the status of Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbor," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. Through illustrating the errors and triumphs of Freedom's protagonists as they endeavor to comprehend how to survive in an increasingly perplexing society, Franzen has created a lasting and profoundly poignant portrayal of our era.

a jacket