- Editorial:
- HARPER COLLINS
- Materia
- General fiction
- ISBN:
- 978-0-00-830890-2
CROSSROADS
FRANZEN, JONATHAN
Set in a historical moment of moral crisis, Crossroads the first instalment of the trilogy A Key to All Mythologies is the stunning foundation of a sweeping investigation of human mythologies, as the Hildebrandt family navigate the political, intellectual and social crosscurrents of of the past fifty years
Its December 23, 1971, and the Hildebrandt family is at a crossroads. The patriarch, Russ, the associate pastor of a suburban Chicago church, is poised to break free of a marriage he finds joyless unless his brilliant and unstable wife, Marion, breaks free of it first. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college afire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clems sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high school class, has veered into the eras counterculture, while their younger brother Perry, fed up with selling pot to support his drug habit, has firmly resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.
By turns comic and harrowing, a tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense which is complete in itself, Crossroads is the first volume of a trilogy that will span three generations and trace the inner life of our culture through the present day. Jonathan Franzens gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident.