Freedom: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter’s dreams. Together with Walter—environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man—she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter’s college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become “a very different kind of neighbor,” an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street’s attentive eyes? In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom’s characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.

- Google

The 616th greatest fiction book of all time


This book is on the following lists:

  1. - 8th on The Ideal Library (Book)
  2. - 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (The Book)

Buy This Book

Name Binding Sales Rank Lowest New Lowest Used Published
Freedom: A Novel Hardcover 159221 $0.24 $0.01 2010
Freedom: A Novel Audio CD 434229 $3.13 $1.70 2010
Freedom: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club) Paperback 1952897 $9.84 $7.28 2011
Freedom: A Novel Audio CD 535374 $5.41 $2.97 2010
Freedom by Franzen, Jonathan [Hardcover] Hardcover 5166768 $18.95
Freedom: A Novel Hardcover 499516 $4.15 $2.45 2010
By Jonathan Franzen - Freedom: A Novel (8.1.2010) Hardcover 633627 $4.87 $1.98 2010
Freedom: A Novel Audible Audiobook 21619 $35.95 2010
Freedom Paperback 1437091 $6.51 $0.01
Freedom Paperback 1577235 $14.33 $0.01 2010
Freedom Paperback 1881114 $1.13 $0.01
Freedom: A Novel Hardcover 105907 $2.39 $0.01 2010
Freedom [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD] Audio CD 2524392 $6.59 $4.24
Freedom (Oprah's Book Club) Paperback 69728 $5.00 $1.47 2011
Freedom: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club) Paperback 10636 $3.95 $1.84 2011
Freedom: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club) Kindle Edition 134630 $12.99 2010