Crossroads

(Paperback)

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His best novel yet A Middlemarch-like triumph Telegraph
A pleasure bomb of a novel Vogue

A true modern master Independent

Its 23 December 1971, and the Hildebrandts are at a crossroads. Fifteen-year-old Perry has resolved to be a better person and quit dealing drugs to seventh graders. His sister Becky, the once straight-laced high school social queen, has veered into counterculture, while at college, Clem is wrestling with a decision that might tear his family apart. As their parents Russ, a suburban pastor, and Marion, his restless wife tug against the bonds of a joyless marriage, Crossroads finds a family, and a nation, struggling to do the right thing.

Funny, moving, crackling with life, it has what all great fiction should have Financial Times

Intoxicating a luxuriant domestic drama Guardian

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A GUARDIAN BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021 AN INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR A WHITE REVIEW BOOK OF THE YEAR A LIT HUB BOOK OF THE YEAR

Reviews

[Franzens] talents as a comic storyteller are such that his capacious tales are a treat to get lost in. This one is no exception This is a novel whose momentum often derives from the altered states of its characters obsession; intoxication; lust; religious fervour; mania and the humour is usually of the painful variety as their lives uniformly crumble and they agonise over how or indeed whether to be good Daily Mail

[A]pleasure bomb of a novel Few [writers] can take human contradiction andmake it half as entertaining and intimate as Franzen does Amagnificent portrait of an Americanfamily on the brink Vogue

In Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen goes back to family-anatomising basics and it's his best novel yet The result is a Middlemarch-like triumph Telegraph

Franzen has laid the ground beautifully, and his first act is intoxicating a luxuriant domestic drama that opens out into politics, running against the grain of the counterculture with its focus on the friction between conservatism and radicalism, Christianity and social activism Guardian

Crossroads is classic Franzen fodder: a slice of suburban life ripe not for satire but for the far deadlier scrutiny that comes from taking it seriously New Yorker

A mellow, marzipan-hued 70s-era heartbreaker.Crossroadsis warmer than anything [Franzen has] yet written, wider in its human sympathies, weightier of image and intellect New York Times Book Review

The compelling dialogue, the authenticity of place, time and character, the assured insights and the exquisite minutiae of description, all confirm that the reader is in the hands of a true modern master a simply stunning novel iNews

A firecracker Irish Times

A mesmerising tale he writes sentences that are as addictive as opioids Herald

Author Bio

Jonathan Franzen's work includes four novels (The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, The Corrections, Freedom), two collections of essays (Farther Away, How To Be Alone), a memoir (The Discomfort Zone), and, most recently, The Kraus Project. He is recognised as one of the best American writers of our age and has won many awards. He lives in New York City and Santa Cruz, California.