FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen - SIGNED FIRST EDITION BOOK
See all titles by Jonathan Franzen.Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul—the
gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods
generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you
where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to
actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife
of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter—environmental lawyer, commuter
cyclist, total family man—she was doing her small part to build a better
world.
But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why
has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family
next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What
exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter's college best friend
and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to
Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very
different kind of neighbor," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before
the street's attentive eyes?
In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom
comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of
liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle
age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In
charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's characters as they
struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen
has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.