Contemporary literature

When I picked up The Corrections, I was guided by the New York Times, which placed it among the one hundred most important books of the twenty-first century: number five on the list. Such a distinction sets expectations high, and Franzen’s novel, in many respects, meets them.

At its heart, The Corrections tells the story of the Lambert family: Enid and Alfred, an aging Midwestern couple, and their three adult children, Gary, Chip, and Denise. Enid dreams of gathering everyone for one last perfect Christmas in St. Jude, their small Midwestern town, while each of her children struggles with disillusionment and moral confusion: Gary, a successful but unhappy banker; Chip, a failed academic turned dubious entrepreneur; and Denise, a talented chef caught between ambition and guilt. The narrative shifts between their lives, revealing the cracks that have formed over time in a family once bound by habit, faith, and duty.

The most moving sections are those devoted to the siblings’ childhood. In these pages, Franzen writes with a delicate precision, capturing the small joys and sorrows of domestic life. The narration, fluidly shifting from one consciousness to another, gives the impression of a single, shared organism: each family member incomplete without the others. Here, the novel feels alive, intimate, and painfully true.

The non-chronological structure strengthens this impression. Franzen’s fragmented storytelling mirrors the workings of memory itself, where the past constantly invades the present. Yet this structure also reveals the novel’s unevenness. Certain parts display emotional depth and subtlety, while others collapse under satire or excess.

The weakest section, to my mind, concerns Chip’s career as a cultural promoter in Lithuania. What may have been intended as dark comedy turns into ridicule. Franzen’s depiction of post-Soviet Lithuania: as a place ruled by gunmen and devoid of substance: feels condescending and detached from reality. The humour, elsewhere sharp and intelligent, here becomes heavy-handed and almost irritating.

Still, Franzen redeems himself in the portrayal of Alfred’s descent into Parkinson’s disease. These passages are poignant and unflinching, revealing the fragility of the human body and the stubborn dignity of old age. They carry an emotional truth that lingers long after the satire fades.

The Corrections is, in the end, a deeply human but uneven novel. It oscillates between irony and empathy, brilliance and excess. Despite its flaws (and perhaps because of them) it stands as a powerful reflection on family, memory, and the small, painful adjustments we make in our lives in the hope of setting things right.