A return to form for Jonathan Franzen in this addictive (and huge) novel.

Set at the beginning of the changing winds of the 1970s, pastor and patriarch Russ Hilderbrand is struggling to hold the strands of his life together. His disgrace at work, his shaky marriage, his relationship with his unruly kids and his own self-doubt all add up to trouble as Christmas looms over the horizon. Following these events, the secrets and lies of the Hilderbrand family are revealed, and each of them have to confront the challenges to their happiness.

Since he wrote The Corrections, author Jonathan Franzen has had a lot to live up to. It’s huge success meant that anything following would be under great scrutiny and, more than likely, criticised. true to form, his next few books underwhelmed and left many feeling that his best work was perhaps…his first.

Fortunately, with Crossroads – the first of a projected trilogy – Franzen has returned to the family saga theme which made him so popular and has created something special. As if making a play for the title ‘The Great American Novel’, his sense of small-scale humanity is set against a backdrop of huge change in America but in a subtle enough way that makes it even resonant and not forced. His writing contains the familiar canny knack at breathing life into characters, and the way he makes us care for each and every one of them is nothing short of superb.

Ultimately, it is this skill at character – to articulate that tragic balance of hope and disappointment that all his creations display – that is most impressive. The solid, unflinching pace of Crossroads means that the only disappointment we feel at the end of the book is…that we can’t (yet) get straight on to book two.

(Review by Cliff)