THE CORRECTIONS (Jonathan Franzen) - May 1/12

Ugh. What a disappointment. This book, which feels about 400 pages longer than necessary, was, for the most part, a real slog to get through, as Franzen overwrites things to a degree that's nothing short of infuriating. The characters are certainly quite vivid, but Franzen offers up one interminable digression after another that results in a complete absence of momentum. The guy is so impressed with his prose that many passages are rendered incoherent. (How pretentious do you have to be, for example, to diminish the impact of a sequence in which a guy jumps off a cruise ship?) I enjoyed exactly one stretch in the entire book - Denise's exploits as she traveled Europe, started her restaurant, and embarked on an affair with her boss' wife - but there's so much here that I just glazed over (eg Chip's interminable exploits in Lithuania). I could see how the final stretch might move someone (eg Denise learns of his father's true reasons for quitting his job) but I was unmoved and just happy the book was drawing to a close. ** out of ****