num_pages: 568
description: "The Corrections" is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century - a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes.After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. The oldest, Gary, a once-stable portfolio manager and family man, is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed. The middle child, Chip, has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work. And Denise, the youngest, has escaped a disastrous marriage only to pour her youth and beauty down the drain of an affair with a married man - or so her mother fears. Desperate for some pleasure to look forward to, Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home. Stretching from the Midwest at midcentury to the Wall Street and Eastern Europe of today, "The Corrections" brings an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions into violent collision with the era of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare, and globalised greed. Richly realistic, darkly hilarious, deeply humane, it confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of our most brilliant interpreters of American society and the American soul.
language: English
title: The Corrections
titlecomplete: The Corrections
characters: Brian Callahan, Enid Lambert, Julia Vrais, Denise Lambert, Alfred Lambert, Sylvia Wroth, Chip Lambert, Gary Lambert, Robin Passafaro
genres: Fiction, Family, American, The United States Of America, Literature, Novels, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Unfinished, Audiobook
ratings_count: 179274
places: St. Jude, Illinois, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New York City, New York
awards: awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: National Book Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: James Tait Black Memorial Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Audie Award
category: Fiction, Abridged, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Dublin Literary Award
category: Shortlist
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux