The Corrections: A Novel (79 page)

From the reviews of
The Corrections:

‘Intelligent, compellingly readable, funny and above all generous spirited, it is a rare thing, a modern novel with both head and heart’

TERENCE BLACKER
,
Daily Mail

‘A genuine masterpiece, the first great American novel of the twenty-first century. Sentence by whiplash sentence this novel offers extraordinary pleasures of language, of structure, of plot, of perception, of history, and, most dazzlingly, of character… A wisecracking, eloquent, heartbreaking beauty’

WILL BLYTH
,
Elle

‘For anyone who has ever found themselves guiltily yearning for an Anne Tyler while in the middle of an Updike or Wolfe. The Lamberts are utterly believable, and once they have all told their stories you can’t help but sympathise with them. Be prepared to be moved’

LAURENCE PHELAN
,
Independent on Sunday

‘In its complexity, its scrutinising and utterly unsentimental humanity, and its grasp of the subtle relationships between domestic drama and global events,
The Corrections
stands in the
company of Mann’s Buddenbrooks and DeLillo’s
White Noise
. It is a major accomplishment’

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM

‘
The Corrections
is the whole package… You will laugh, wince, groan, weep, leave the table and maybe the country, promise never to go home again, and be reminded of why you read serious fiction in the first place’

JOHN LEONARD
,
New York Review of Books

‘A major novel that reflects the achievements of Updike and DeLillo while being an entirely original voice. A big, beautiful novel’

GEORGE WALDEN
,
Evening Standard

‘A remarkably energetic novel, by turns funny, caustic, upsetting and dramatic’

CRAIG BROWN
,
Mail on Sunday

‘As good as anything I’ve ever read’

RACHEL CUSK
,
Daily Telegraph

‘A big-hearted, panoramic American epic, intelligent and wise but also wildly, stonkingly funny’

LIZ JENSEN
,
Independent

‘Compelling. A pleasure from beginning to end. Franzen, in one leap, has put himself into the league of Updike and Roth and that’s why there is so much excitement about it’

DAVID SEXTON
,
Evening Standard

‘Jonathan Franzen has built a powerful novel out of the swarming consciousness of a marriage, a family, a whole culture’

DON DELILLO

‘What this man writes is true, and what is true indicts us.
The Corrections
transcends its many wonderful moments to become that rarest of things, a contemporary novel that will endure’

SVEN BIRKERTS
,
Esquire

‘Funny and deeply sad, large-hearted and merciless,
The
Corrections
is a testament to the range and depth of pleasures that great fiction affords’

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

Harper Perennial An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road London w6 8jb

www.harperperennial.co.uk

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First published in paperback by Fourth Estate 2002 First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate 2001

Jonathan Franzen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007317998