Cultural Dessert

'Crossroads' by Jonathan Franzen

26 November 2021

Jonathan Franzen is a fascinating and impressive writer but his incredibly lengthy novels can sometimes feel like hard work. His masterpiece was ‘The Corrections’ (2001), which cleverly made the reader sympathise simultaneously with people who held completely opposing points of view – turning apparently unlikeable characters into sympathetic people. But his subsequent novels ‘Freedom’ (reviewed here in April 2012) and ‘Purity’ (reviewed here in February 2016) felt like increasingly diminishing returns - a trend continued by his new book ‘Crossroads’, which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by David Pittu. ‘Crossroads’ is another doorstop of a novel (592 pages) which focuses like ‘The Corrections’ on the members of a family, in this case Russ Hildebrandt - a pastor in New Prospect, Illinois, his wife and four children. Set initially in 1971, we see the Hildebrandts’ domestic life, and their involvement in the church youth group (Crossroads), through the eyes of each of the family members in turn (apart from the youngest child Judson whose perspective we sadly never get). As in his other novels, Jonathan Franzen very cleverly shows us the same events from different points of view, constantly upending the assumptions and sympathies we have formed. It’s a very impressive technique, brilliantly used in the first half of the novel which revolves around the events of a single day, painstakingly sketching in the details and backstories as we alternate between the five viewpoints. The second half of the book stretches the same approach over a longer timeframe. Although it’s wonderfully written, and often very funny, it felt too slow and too long, and all five protagonists - despite having vast archives of mitigating reasons for their behaviour, which are gradually revealed to explain their actions - ultimately all remained quite annoying and unlikeable. Jonathan Franzen always seems to be trying to write the great American novel - saying something about the state of the country through the minutiae of family life - and ‘Crossroads’ reminded me of another book with similar ambitions, Philip Roth’s ‘American Pastoral’, which I also found very impressive but quite hard work to read. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, there is a lot of sex, drugs and religion in ‘Crossroads’ but it could have done with a bit more light relief.

Labels: Books

posted by Robin Simpson @ 5:13 pm