The pastor’s family at the heart of Franzen’s sixth novel – a bravura examination of the mores of liberal America in 1971 – are his most sympathetic creation to date
The characters in Jonathan Franzen’s sixth novel exist in that much-disputed no man’s land between hip and square, in the culture wars of 1971. Since The Corrections, 20 years ago, Franzen has made himself the modern master of that fundamental driver of the 19th-century novel, the understanding that all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Here, his never less than acute attention falls on the interior lives of the Hildebrandt family in small-town Illinois in the run-up to Christmas.
The patriarch, Russ Hildebrandt, is the minister at the First Reformed church in New Prospect, beset by temptation in the sweater-dressed form of his recently widowed congregant, Frances Cottrell, and usurped in his spiritual mission by a new young youth minister, Rick Ambrose, who offers the town’s teenagers a heady mix of gospel platitudes and rock music (you are reminded that Jesus Christ Superstar had opened on Broadway that autumn). Ambrose has created Crossroads, a cultish youth group for midwestern adolescents, which renounces sex and drugs in favour of “honest interactions” and “personal growth”. Fringed denim, earnest eye contact and cross-legged confessions are mandatory. Partly as an act of rebellion, Hildebrandt’s three eldest children have neglected their father’s Sunday sermons and joined Ambrose’s after hours’ mission. Perry, 16, with an IQ of 160, sees the group in part as a useful market for his pot dealing. His sister, Becky, has sensed the godhead in the 12-string guitar and sensitive fingers of Tanner Evans, Ambrose’s most charismatic young disciple. Nights at Crossroads, in the falling snow, are James Taylor songs come to life.
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