Keen eye for dirty linen

So loud were the tom toms, any reviewer could not but have taken on board the chorus of approval: Franzen had written a masterpiece; a fitting sequel to his last masterpiece, The Corrections; the greatest novel of the century.

This 10-year-old century has given his American readership something to think about: Islamist terrorism on the mainland and consequent US terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan; environmental disaster and exploitation; and the information revolution that goes straight to the core of personal freedoms. It has also given Franzen the template to “find ways to connect the largest possible social picture with the most intimate personal, difficult-to-express human stories”.

The human stories on which Franzen focuses involve Patty Berglund, a former college basketball star and nominee for super-mom of the year, until her adored son moves out and depression strikes; her husband, Walter, whose goal is to protect the planet from overpopulation, and who slips into his own depression, having struck up questionable liaisons with the coalmining industry; their son, Joey, “who refuses to recognise any distinction between children and grown-ups”, and moves into the right-wing neighbour’s home, and her daughter’s bed; Jessica, who is a rock and works in publishing.

“There had always been something not quite right about the Berglunds,” not least of which is Richard Katz, the punk-rocker best friend of Walter, whose penis points like a compass needle to the nearest “smart depressive kind of chick”; to whose magnetic pole Patty is drawn while the trio are college students in Minnesota and, later, when the Berglunds are quietly desperate parents in St Paul and Washington. Patty tasted the forbidden fruit, but “fucked it up royally . . . and then proceeded to become quite unhinged”.

All the parents in Freedom are quite unhinged – depressives, drunks, and, in the case of Patty’s parents, self-centred politicos who, for their own political gain, refuse to expose her rape as a teenager.

Franzen is majestic in depicting the “not quite right” American extended family, particularly the painful intimacy of marital conflict: “Fighting had become their portal to sex, almost the only way it ever happened anymore. While the rain lashed and the sky flashed, he tried to fill her with self-worth and desire, tried to convey how much he needed her to be the person he could bury his cares in. It never quite worked and yet, when they were done, there came a stretch of minutes in which they lay and held each other in the quiet majesty of long marriage, forgot themselves in shared sadness and forgiveness for everything they’d inflicted on each other, and rested.”

Franzen’s language is intoxicating in its simplicity. His use of dialogue is exceptional, light of touch and sure of sentiment. Characters achieve a universality to be envied; minor characters bristle with such clarity and sharp wit, the reader is slow to look in a mirror. Yes, Freedom is a very good novel, maybe even a great novel. As for it being the American novel of the century, the next 90 years will tell.