Just as Franzen’sprevious novel Freedom was really a book about inescapable constraint, so Purity is really a book about inevitable corruption (which makes it a considerably more enticing prospect). So, if you’re going to read Purity, you’re in for a treat, and if you’re not, please stand by, Reading in Bed will return to regular programming in a couple of days.This novelcontains multitudes: love, murder, marital terrorism, embarrassing sex, nasty sex, solo sex, the Stasi, internet leaks, missing nuclear weapons, missing fathers, overbearing mothers and a variety of interesting bowel disorders. There were hilarious parts and weird parts and banal parts. I don’t think I cried, but I felt real dread during the lead up to the murder, and felt impotent and icky during the seduction of, well, everyone who gets seduced. Purity is plotty, but it’s also pretty emotional. I miss Pip! She’s annoying and self-centred and predictable, but she got to me. Not that we like, empathize with, or relate to (though you might do all those things,) but they keep you turning the pages and slogging through the parts that are sloggy and you miss them after you’re done. Speaking of, Purity demonstrates what Franzen’s strength has been all along: he creates characters the reader cares about. The characters are still in the forefront. There’s also a mystery and a murder, new territory for Franzen, but they don’t overwhelm the story.

If you read his Big Three novels in order, you’d see them get better, smoother, less “I see what you did there.” The threads in Purity come together in a way that reminded me of The Luminaries you almost don’t notice it till it’s done. I read The Corrections recently, and that helped me see what a step up Purity is. It didn’t shake up my view of what a Franzen novel is. The affairs and sexual misconduct have larger implications for the characters than they did in Freedom. The chapters set in Europe aren’t just a satirical sidebar, like they were in The Corrections. It’s got Franziness. See the end of this post for my incomplete list of Franziness indicators and add your own.įranzen’s interviewer at Book Expo America made much of how “plotty” this book is, which is to say, things happen outside the family/personal realm. Like Nell Zink, I won’t bother trying to convince you to read Purity, because you already know if you’re going to read it or not (her review is still offline, so you’ll have to take my word for it.) As my mom used to say, if you like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing you will like. Thanks to: The fine people at Macmillian (FSG) for giving me and 199 other lucky Book Expo America attendees an advance reader’s copy.

Purity franzen