Freedom

Pattyand Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul -- thegentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foodsgeneration. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbour who could tell youwhere to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops toactually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and thewife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter -- environmentallawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man -- she was doing her smallpart to build a better world.

Butnow, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Whyhas their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republicanfamily next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal?What exactly is Richard Katz -- outre rocker and Walter's collegebest friend and rival -- still doing in the picture? Most of all,what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Streetbecome "a very different kind of neighbour," an implacableFury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?

Inhis first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given usan epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically andtragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: thethrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, thewages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting themistakes and joys of Freedom's intensely realized characters as theystruggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world,Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of ourtime.