@Wesley Lau: your review is long and boring! Wish you had something more specific to say...

Great book!

Franzen is one of our greatest writers of train wrecks. I kept reading, compulsively, in horrified fascination, waiting for the train to go off the tracks. (Subject heading: Dysfunctional Families - Fiction.) His characters may not be likable, but they're rarely all bad. They're complicated and human, they're believable, and they grow. It may take decades, but they find out what they value and what they're good at and how to live a little better. Not as bitingly funny as The Corrections, but kinder and just as well written.

Franzen is certainly an outstanding writer. Got a galley for this book, and since he was scheduled to speak at the library, I thought I'd better read it. Not really enthusiastic about reading a 700 page novel after all the hype, but was immediately drawn in on the first page. It's a testimony to Franzen that he can write such a compelling novel about such unlikeable characters.

A fast read, very enjoyable even though some of the characters are truly not likable. Read very much like The Corrections, although I enjoyed this book more.

Do not read this book. I honestly cannot understand the positive reviews. This book seems objectively horrible in my opinion. I can't even see how it would be subjectively enjoyable as a whole book. It was hard to decide between one or two stars. I want to strongly discourage anyone from reading this book. I was hoping the book would be good, or at least decent, because it was a bestseller. I even looked up some reviews, surprised that so many of them were negative. In spite of the strangely large proportion of negative reviews, I decided to read it anyway because the positive reviews praised it so heavily. The book was awful. It was painful to get through. Having no idea what the book was about, the first 30 pages were alright. I thought they developed the scene/context thoroughly. It was suffering to get through the next 510 pages. The story never went anywhere; it meandered. It would ramble for pages about nothing interesting. If you visualize a plot as an inclined plane that works its way up to a climax, this book's plot was a straight horizontal line throughout: boring and unchanging. And if it weren't for my line metaphor, I would also describe the story as directionless. There was never anything to look forward to. Everything was just "whatever" in that it didn't matter if you had read it or not because it didn't contribute anything to the story. To make matters worse, there aren't really chapters in this book. There are sections, but they are hundreds of pages long without any breaks in between. The last 20 pages of the book were actually enjoyable. It was a good summary of the previous 500 pages while adding something new and being interesting in and of itself. In this respect, the only reason I would give this book two stars is if I let the good impression of the last 20 good pages, my last impression of the book, cloud my memory of the terrible 500 pages that came before them. If the book consisted of only the first 30 and last 20 pages of the book, it would be alright. Again, the middle was absolutely horrible and I only finished the book so that I could have a complete picture when writing this review. That, and I wanted to see if it would get better and live up to its hype.

Tried to finish but could not. Too long and boring.

I picked this book because it had so many rave reviews, but found it to be a long and somewhat slogging read. I hung in there because the characters were interesting and I wanted to see what happened in the end. The pace did pick up toward the end. Overall I would recommend it, but not give it a rave.

Incredibly too long, much to wordy. Far to much character background that goes nowhere.

Too long. Lots of boring bits. Could have been condensed. But an okay read in the end.