The Corrections

A family saga about the Lambert family in the Midwest, exploring themes of mental illness, aging, and the changing American family with masterful social satire and emotional depth.

The Lambert family is falling apart. Alfred, the patriarch, is succumbing to Parkinson's disease and dementia, while his wife Enid desperately wants to bring their three adult children home for one last Christmas. But Gary is struggling with his own depression and a manipulative wife, Chip has lost his job as a professor and is involved in a questionable scheme in Lithuania, and Denise is dealing with the aftermath of an affair that destroyed her restaurant career.

Franzen creates a sweeping portrait of American life at the turn of the millennium, showing how economic and social changes have affected the middle class. Each Lambert represents a different response to contemporary pressures: Gary's pharmaceutical-assisted depression, Chip's academic pretensions and financial desperation, Denise's artistic ambitions and sexual confusion.

The novel's title refers to the various ways people try to "correct" their lives—through medication, therapy, success, or simply denial. But Franzen suggests that some problems can't be fixed, only endured with grace and humor. The book's treatment of mental illness is particularly nuanced, showing how depression and dementia affect not only the sufferers but their entire families.

Franzen's prose combines social satire with genuine emotional depth. He's particularly skilled at capturing the dynamics of family relationships—the way love and resentment can coexist, how adult children carry their childhood roles into middle age, and how parents struggle to connect with children whose lives they can barely understand.

The novel's exploration of American consumer culture is both funny and deeply critical. Franzen shows how the promise of endless choice and self-improvement can become a burden, leading to paralysis rather than freedom.

The Corrections won the National Book Award and established Franzen as one of the most important American novelists of his generation, proving that literary fiction could still tackle big social themes while maintaining intimate focus on character and family.