Freedom

Written by Jonathan Franzen

Narrated by David LeDoux

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul - the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter’s dreams. Together with Walter - environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man - she was doing her small part to build a better world.

But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What, exactly, is Richard Katz - outré rocker and Walter’s college best friend and rival - still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to 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 this instant number-one best-selling novel, Jonathan Franzen charts the mistakes and joys of these intensely realized characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world. An epic of contemporary love and marriage, Freedom is a deeply moving portrait of our time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Apr 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781443416726

Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen’s work includes four novels (The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom), two collections of essays (Farther Away, How To Be Alone), a memoir (The Discomfort Zone), and, most recently, The Kraus Project. He is recognised as one of the best American writers of our age and has won many awards. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.

Reviews for Freedom

[Raha Respina · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Although the book didn’t end in a way you expect from Franzen I enjoyed how he portrayed contemporary politics of the State through a narrative of modern family challenges.