{"product_id":"freedom-jonathan-franzen","title":"Freedom","description":"Amazon Best of the Month, September 2010: \"The awful thing about life is this:\" says Octave to the Marquis in Renoir's Rules of the Game. \"Everyone has his reasons.\" That could be a motto for novelists as well, few more so than Jonathan Franzen, who seems less concerned with creating merely likeable characters than ones who are fully alive, in all their self-justifying complexity. Freedom is his fourth novel, and, yes, his first in nine years since The Corrections. Happy to say, it's very much a match for that great book, a wrenching, funny, and forgiving portrait of a Midwestern family (from St. Paul this time, rather than the fictional St. Jude). Patty and Walter Berglund find each other early: a pretty jock, focused on the court and a little lost off it, and a stolid budding lawyer, besotted with her and almost burdened by his integrity. They make a family and a life together, and, over time, slowly lose track of each other. Their stories align at times with Big Issues--among them mountaintop removal, war profiteering, and rock'n'roll--and in some ways can't be separated from them, but what you remember most are the characters, whom you grow to love the way families often love each other: not for their charm or goodness, but because they have their reasons, and you know them. --Tom Nissley\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/strong\u003e Jonathan Franzen\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e HarperCollins Publishers Ltd\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eYear:\u003c\/strong\u003e 2010\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"HarperCollins Publishers Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45681069752511,"sku":"9781554688838","price":9.0,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0700\/1060\/1663\/files\/637439086-L.jpg?v=1780459294","url":"https:\/\/www.blendedbooknook.com\/products\/freedom-jonathan-franzen","provider":"Blended Book Nook","version":"1.0","type":"link"}