In store now! Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen, author of bestselling novels The Corrections, and Freedom, returns after a near 10-year hiatus from fiction with Crossroads, the first in a trilogy of multi-generational novels telling the rise, fall, and rise again (?) of the Hildebrandts, a dysfunctional family from America’s midwest. Imbued with Franzen’s lyrical eye for detail, and his incredible understanding of complicated family dynamics, Crossroads is funny, warm, clever, and moving, things we have come to expect from Franzen throughout his storied career. Crossroads sees Franzen operating at the hight of his powers, and could easily be described as the Dickens of 21st Century America. A must read.
Order your copy today directly through October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get a commission on your purchase.
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
Hardback £20
It's December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. 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.
Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. 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. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.
Jonathan Franzen's novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and their keen-eyed take on the complexities of contemporary America. Now, for the first time, in Crossroads, Franzen explores the history of a generation. With characteristic humour and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that feels no less immediate.
A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a historical moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen's gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.
Order your copy today directly from October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get commission on your purchase.
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