The corrections

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The corrections ( English The Corrections) is the third novel by the American writer Jonathan Franzen . It was published in September 2001 and helped the author achieve his international breakthrough.

content

The novel is divided into seven chapters (St. Jude - The Failure - The more he thought about it, the angrier he got - At sea - The generator - One last Christmas - The corrections). It portrays the Lambert family who lived in the fictional city of St. Jude in the American Midwest during the second half of the 20th century . The main storyline is based on Enid Lambert's efforts, in view of the rapid physical and mental decline of her husband Alfred, to gather the three adult children Denise, Gary and Chip together for possibly the last Christmas party in their parents' house. The book dedicates a separate storyline to each of the three children: The middle son Chip loses his job as a literature professor because of an affair with a student. After failing to make a living as a screenwriter in New York , he gets involved in criminal business in Lithuania . Gary is a successful banker, but suffers from depression and his manipulative wife, who forges alliances against him with their three children. Denise, the youngest, runs the kitchen of a top Philadelphia restaurant , but loses that position when her boss and wife find out that she's had an affair with each of them. On Christmas Day, the storylines finally come together in St. Jude. A short epilogue then informs the reader of the events leading up to Alfred's death.

criticism

The novel was largely positively and sometimes enthusiastically discussed by literary critics. He won the National Book Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Jonathan Franzen and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN / Faulkner Award . With 2.85 million copies sold (as of 2010), the book was also a hit with the public. Time magazine ranks the novel among the top 100 English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. In 2015, this novel was chosen by the BBC's selection of the best 20 novels from 2000 to 2014 as one of the most important works of this century to date. The German first edition appeared in 2002. It was number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list for a week in the same year .

expenditure

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Gates: American Gothic. Reviewed in the New York Times on September 9, 2001
  2. ^ Nicholas Lezard: The right stuff. Review in The Guardian, September 28, 2002
  3. ^ Lev Grossman: Jonathan Franzen: Great American Novelist In: Time , August 12, 2010