Saturday 11 April 2009

The Discomfort Zone - Jonathan Franzen



The Discomfort Zone follows naturally from Jonathan Franzen’s 2001 bestseller The Corrections. Sure, that was fiction and this is autobiography, but many of the themes and settings of everyday life remain the same. It chronicles the author’s growth from a “small and fundamentally ridiculous person” to the confidently insecure writer he has become. He casts his scope both inwards and out, linking his own life to the socio-political history of the last fifty years. His story is both personal and universal.

It is a good read, and what we are left with is a picture of everyday life in all its fabulous banality: a life which Franzen loves and hates in alternating measure but which is an inextricable part of himself and his fiction

6 out of 10

No comments: