Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen: Testing the Limits of the Family Bond

The Franzen returns! 

You know, for a writer who has such a reputation (warranted or not) for being an unpleasant curmudgeon, he sure understands and seems to like people. And he sure knows how to tell their stories in such a way that even a 600-page novel, like his new novel Crossroads, seems to just fly by.

A few months ago, I attended a Zoom interview with The Franzen, during which he mentioned he's of the (seemingly arbitrary) belief that writers only have six good novels in them, and then they should retire. He said when he started Crossroads, his sixth novel, he was sure it would be his last book — but then he got so into it and the lives of this family, 600 pages later, we have what is the first volume in a trilogy. 

Woo, and may I add, Hoo! 

I for one am delighted about this, because I loved/hated/was absolutely fascinated by this family. To back up a second, Crossroads tells the story of a family of six — the Hildebrandts — living in a suburb of Chicago in the early 1970s. These people are quirky but also about as normal and everyday as people get. The father is an assistant pastor at a local church, the mother is a stay-at-home mom, and the kids do kids-like things, fight with each other, go off to college, try drugs, sex, and rock and roll. 

As each character wrestles with their own problems (and their checkered pasts, in the parents' cases, especially in the case of mother Marion), things, as is the case with all families who are miserable in their own way, get broken. Each member of this family seems to be striving for his or her own individual definition of freedom (a common Franzen theme), both from the constraints of their family, but also, just to live their lives in the way they believe they're intended to. 

Franzen asks us to consider some pretty itchy questions in Crossroads. For one, when you are so mad at someone you love, how is it possible to repair the damage done by intentional cruelty? For another, how do you overcome the feeling that you may not even, much less love, the people in your own family anymore? 

The revolving character studies and how each of these characters relate to each other is interesting enough to keep us moving along quickly. But what Franzen's really got going on here is a novel about the extremely fine lines between ostensible opposites: love and hate, respect and contempt, faithfulness and infidelity, faith and doubt, empathy and intentional cruelty, and self-righteousness and altruism. 

I don't know if this is my favorite Franzen novel — but it's up there. And I can't wait for the next one!