Franzen patiently clears space for the slow rise and fall of character, for the chiming of his themes and for a freight of events. Crossroads is warmer than anything yet written, wider in its human sympathies, weightier of image and intellect. 'A mellow, marzipan-hued ’70s-era heartbreaker. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Telegraph, TIME, Town and Country, USA Today, Vogue, Vulture, The Washington Post, and more Named a Best Book of the Year by Air Mail, Barack Obama, Bookforum, BookPage, Electric Lit, Financial Times, The Guardian (UK), Good Housekeeping, The Independent (UK), Kirkus Reviews, Lit Hub, Oprah Daily, The Millions, New Statesman, Newsweek, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Slate, St. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own.Ī tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. Jonathan Franzen’s novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America.

Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who’s been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless-unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it.

It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.

Franzen trilogy