Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident. With characteristic humour and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that feels no less immediate.Ī tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a historical moment of moral crisis. Now, for the first time, in Crossroads, Franzen explores the history of a generation. Jonathan Franzen’s novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and their keen-eyed take on the complexities of contemporary America. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who’s been selling drugs to seventh-graders, has resolved to be a better person. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. That reference is classic Franzen, who imbues his books with big ideas, in this case about responsibility to family, self, God, country, and one’s fellow man, among other matters, all the while digging deep into his characters’ emotions, experiences, desires, and doubts in a way that will please readers seeking to connect to books heart-first. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless – unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Set in a historical moment of moral crisis, Crossroads is the stunning foundation of a sweeping investigation of human mythologies, as the Hildebrandt family navigate the political and social crosscurrents of the past fifty years ‘His best novel yet … A Middlemarch-like triumph’ Telegraph

Crossroads franzen review