Excellent

lovely winding story, easy listening. first franzen novel, will be seeking out more of his efforts.

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The freedom to mess up your life!

This is a monumental novel using the lives of three generations of the Bergland family to explore many issues ranging from family relationships to overpopulation, global warming, politics and war. Second generation Patty and Walter and their son Joey provide the most engaging stories.

At first Patty and Walter are portrayed as a perfect middle-class American family but soon the cracks appear, back-stories are revealed and family tensions abound. Walter’s former college room-mate, Richard Katz, is throughout the book a catalyst for change.

The book is full of well-drawn characters whose strong beliefs and feelings often lead them into trouble. I certainly felt drawn into their lives such that I cared what happened to them and frustrated when they made bad decisions.

It’s a very long book and while much of it makes compelling listening there are some tedious patches such as too much detail about the technicalities of basketball. It is polemical with strong liberal opinions, but since I agree with most I was happy to hear them.

Though not perfect I do think it is a great novel using engaging personal stories that certainly made me think about issues.

The narrator is very good.

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4 people found this helpful

Great book but narrator doesn't work

If you could sum up Freedom in three words, what would they be?

brilliant, thought-provoking, intense

What aspect of David Ledoux’s performance might you have changed?

Ledoux was excellent at general narration and male characterisation, but completely ruined the book for me because he couldn't help but make the female characters sound patronised and weak. It took me a while to realise that I was getting the wrong slant on the characters, especially the central character of PAttie, because he made her sound like a two-dimensional wet blanket. But she is much more complex than that.

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I avoided all the hype and loved it

I don't understand why more people don't write like Franzen; portraying the struggles, frustrations and complications of everyday life that are right there in front of us. Like Frank Skinner sticking it to other songwriters ?Apparently there's a whole world out there somewhere. It's right there, right there?.

Maybe most people do read to escape but I just get frustrated with unrealistic fiction. If the characters and the world they live in aren?t real, I don?t care about anything else ...more I don't understand why more people don't write like Franzen; portraying the struggles, frustrations and complications of everyday life that are right there in front of us. Like Frank Skinner sticking it to other songwriters ?Apparently there's a whole world out there somewhere. It's right there, right there?.

Maybe most people do read to escape but I just get frustrated with unrealistic fiction. If the characters and the world they live in aren?t real, I don?t care about anything else in the book. Apart from deliberate surrealism of course. Maybe it?s because you?d really have to put so much of yourself and your loved ones in there to render such well drawn characters. Is that what makes it so hard for other writers?

So I loved Freedom. I was really looking forward to it and it lived up to expectations and ticked all my authenticity boxes. I was always dying to get back to it and see what everyone was up to and spend some more time in their company. Not that I necessarily liked them. They all had likable and dis-likable traits, which in itself is just another healthy dose of reality.

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4 people found this helpful

Extraordinary, big, detailed, captivating

Love how JF considers every side to every story. His authentic characters give you the sense you know them, you know their struggles and all their weaknesses. Brilliant.

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opressing freedom

Franzen is still sharp and presents a very real and unbelievably opressiong picture of American life. Though less depressing than in the Corrections.
Wonderfully read. Not for a minute boring!

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highly recommended

That this is a good book does not need saying. The positive review are well-deserved. What strikes me is the narration - David Ledoux doesn't have an annoying voice, doesn't speak too slowly, doesn't get in the way of the story he's telling, nor does he sound like he's trying to put me to sleep. This deserves your monthly credit.

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A deftly managed sprawl

The author is great. Writes so well, swerving expectations and cliches. Remarkable characterisation, human, funny and rich.

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Five stars for Audible, four for Franzen

Having tried The Corrections a few times and given up due to what I perceived as Franzen's overly-verbose style, I approached Freedom with some caution. I wanted, however, to give this author another chance. And I'm glad I did. What helped me get through it was Audible.

David Ledoux's narration deftly navigates Franzen's often serpentine prose, bringing clarity, providing emphasis in all the right places, and not once losing rhythm or sense throughout all those dependent clauses. He added just the right hint of Minnesota accent, kept his characterizations clear without over-doing them (except, perhaps, for the Indian Lalitha, whose voice verges on caricature, reminding me at times of Apu on The Simpsons).

Franzen's text is arch, funny, incisive and unforgiving, and hits the right notes of sympathy once or twice to give his characters heart, especially in the novel's final passage.

My main issue, and several reviewers have pointed this out, is that Patty's journal entries sound as if they were written, not by Patty, but by Franzen. At first I wondered why he simply hadn't written these sections as simple third-person narration. It becomes clear, plot-wise, why these parts have to be in a journal, but their similarity to Franzen's unique style suggests that, as an author, he has but one voice.

Otherwise, if you're looking for a good listen to a contemporary novelist with just the right mix of social satire, character depth and intellectual satisfaction, without overdoing any of them, you'll do well to give this book a listen.

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10 people found this helpful

Katz kills birds - a suburban chronicle

Despite the hype that surrounded the release of this book over the past few weeks, I found there was little to get excited about. What Freedom falls down to is simply an un-extraordinary suburban chronicle of ordinary lives free from insight or real meaning. Whilst much has been made of the unappealing characters, it is the limited number of choices that they make and the lack of any real depth to the interminable ?he said, she said,? which killed off my interest about half way through. In wonderful East Coast company - Donna Tartt, Junot Diaz, John Updike - Franzen has the material on which to zeitgeist-up the GeorgeW-Gen, but no we get a rehashing on the post hippy, post 70?s mourning for the new that we knew. That far in, you grit your teeth and determine to stick it out for the big finish and then, guess what.....?

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1 person found this helpful