J. Franzen "The Corrections"

From the author of "Freedom", a richly realistic and darkly hilarious masterpiece about a family breakdown in an age of easy fixes.

After fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity, and their children have long since fled for the catastrophes of their own lives. As Alfred’s condition worsens and the Lamberts are forced to face their secrets and failures, Enid sets her heart on one last family Christmas.

Bringing the old world of civic virtue and sexual inhibition into violent collision with the era of hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare and globalised greed, "The Corrections" confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of the most brilliant interpreters of the American soul.