Why am I passionate about this?
For me, writing fiction is a way of tackling issues of fate and identity through storytelling. I believe we’re each the result of an intersection between personality and history and I’m interested in the way our time and place impacts us and creates a backdrop for our lives. My first novel, The Wayward Moon, is historical fiction set in the 9th-century Middle East. My second novel follows a Jewish family back six generations to Belarus. But no matter what period I’m writing about, the most important thing is always to tell a good story.
Janice's book list on family dramas in a multi-generational perspective
Why did Janice love this book?
Franzen is at his best when depicting character, and The Corrections goes deep, creating a family drama that is rooted in detailed psychological portraits of his subjects.
In doing so, he meticulously builds their worlds, motivations, and fears, creating nuanced portrayals that not only reveal individual personality, but also the texture and color of life in America in the late 20th century.
Yet the true theme of the book is family dynamics: what does it mean when your mother insists that you come home for Christmas, and what does it mean when you don’t really want to go?
2 authors picked The Corrections as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER
“A spellbinding novel” (People) from the New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Franzen, the author of Crossroads, The Corrections is a comic, tragic epic of worlds colliding: an old-fashioned world of civic virtue and sexual inhibitions, a new world of home surveillance, hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental health care, and globalized greed.
After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson’s disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the…