![]() ![]() The family members are too caught up in their own troubles to take much notice of one another, yet Franzen does an excellent job of tying together the disparate inner lives of the Hildebrandts. Meanwhile, their eldest son Clem has come back from college to fight in Vietnam, their daughter Becky has found God (and rock ’n’ roll), and another son, Perry, is forming a drug habit their youngest, Judson, looks helplessly on as his family falls apart. While Russ pursues one of his parishioners, Frances, his wife Marion begins dissecting her own trauma in therapy. Mainly, in his ability to write about women.Ĭrossroads follows the lives of the Hildebrandts, a family of six headed by Russ, the pastor of a run-down suburban church. ![]() To my delight and surprise, I found Crossroads-the first in a trilogy archly titled A Key to All Mythologies, in reference to George Eliot’s decrepit scholar Edward Casaubon-to be an improvement on Franzen’s earlier work. ![]() Some eagerly awaited the nearly six-hundred–page novel, others wondered what Franzen had left to say about middle American families and their struggles, while a final camp lamented how much attention this one book was getting. After the six-year hiatus, to say Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads was highly anticipated is something of an understatement. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |