Publishers Weekly
★ 06/14/2021
Franzen (Purity) returns with a sweeping and masterly examination of the shifting culture of early 1970s America, the first in a trilogy. The action is centered on the small Illinois town of New Prospect, where the each of the Hildebrandts is experiencing a sea change. The father, Russ, is an associate minister at First Reformed Church and has developed an illicit attraction to a new parishioner, the widow Frances Cottrell, whose zest for life makes Russ feel a renewed sense of his “edge.” Russ is also embroiled in a yearslong feud with Rick Ambrose, who runs the church’s youth organization, Crossroads. Clem, Russ’s oldest son, is at college and having a sexual awakening with his girlfriend, Sharon, who pleads with him not to drop out and lose his deferment (“I’m going to do whatever they want me to do, which probably means Vietnam,” he says, referencing his low lottery number). Becky, Clem’s younger sister, inherits a large sum of money from an aunt and isn’t sure if she should share it with her brothers, especially Perry, the youngest, who is brilliant but cold and self-medicates with weed and ’ludes. All of the characters’ sections are convincingly rendered, and perhaps best of all are those narrated by Russ’s wife, Marion, who had a psychotic breakdown 30 years earlier that she is just starting to come to terms with. As complications stack up for the Hildebrandts, they each confront temptation and epiphany, failure and love. Throughout, Franzen exhibits his remarkable ability to build suspense through fraught interpersonal dynamics. It’s irresistible. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of the Year by Air Mail, Barack Obama, Bookforum, BookPage, Electric Lit, Financial Times, The Guardian (UK), Good Housekeeping, The Independent (UK), Kirkus Reviews, Lit Hub, Oprah Daily, The Millions, New Statesman, Newsweek, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Slate, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Telegraph, TIME, Town and Country, USA Today, Vogue, Vulture, The Washington Post, and more
"A mellow, marzipan-hued ’70s-era heartbreaker. Crossroads is warmer than anything [Franzen has] yet written, wider in its human sympathies, weightier of image and intellect . . . Franzen patiently clears space for the slow rise and fall of character, for the chiming of his themes and for a freight of events . . . [but] the character who cracks this novel fully open—she’s one of the glorious characters in recent American fiction—is Marion . . . The action in Crossroads flows and ebbs toward several tour-de-force scenes." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review
"Thank God for Jonathan Franzen . . . With its dazzling style and tireless attention to the machinations of a single family, Crossroads is distinctly Franzen-esque, but it represents a marked evolution . . . It’s an electrifying examination of the irreducible complexities of an ethical life. With his ever-parsing style and his relentless calculation of the fractals of consciousness, Franzen makes a good claim to being the 21st century’s Nathaniel Hawthorne." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Superb . . . As with the best of Franzen’s fiction, the characters in Crossroads are held up to the light like complexly cut gems and turned to reveal facet after facet . . . Franzen has created characters of almost uncanny authenticity. Is there anything more a great novelist ought to do?" —Laura Miller, Slate
"The Corrections was a masterpiece, but Crossroads is [Franzen's] finest novel yet . . . He has arrived at last as an artist whose first language, faced with the society of greed, is not ideological but emotional, and whose emotions, fused with his characters, tend more toward sorrow and compassion than rage and self-contempt...” —Frank Guan, Bookforum
"A work of total, tantalizing genius. Entombed with big ideas and eccentric characters, Crossroads is a brilliant, excessive, and absorbing novel that instantly feels like Franzen’s finest." —Brady Brickner-Wood, The Chicago Review of Books
"Like a latter-day George Eliot, Franzen can light up large thematic skies but also keep his eye on the sparrow." —Thomas Mallon, The New York Times Book Review
“Franzen is a master of rendering the broad sweep of humanity through the (extremely human) minutia of a family. In Crossroads, I felt a frustration and fondness for the Hildebrandts so deep it was almost familial. This is, perhaps, [Franzen’s] greatest skill as a writer . . . What more could a reader ask for, really?” —Jessie Gaynor, Lit Hub
"[A] pleasure bomb of a novel . . . New prospects are what keep [Crossroads] so engrossing, each section expanding on and deepening the poignancy of what has come before . . . . Few [writers] can take human contradiction and make it half as entertaining and intimate as Franzen does . . . A magnificent portrait of an American family on the brink of implosion . . . Crossroads is Act I of what’s bound to be an American classic." —Lauren Mechling, Vogue
"Soulful, funny and so sharply observed it hurts . . . Crossroads gets this wildly ambitious [trilogy] off to a glorious start.” —Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times
"[A] sweeping, sumptuous new novel . . . [Franzen] pays homage to great nineteenth century social realists, from George Eliot to Balzac to Dickens, while gazing unflinchingly to the ills that shape us today . . . Crossroads is consumed with the cause and effect of our choices, especially our selfish ones. The novel closes on a cliffhanger, teeing up for the next two installments of his trilogy, a triumphant opening gambit in what may become a vital pillar of our literature." —Hamilton Cain, Oprah Daily
"[Crossroads] is carefully wrought, its neatly balanced architecture another clandestine source of its power." —Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker
“Crossroads is expansive and funny; a pure pleasure to read.” —Xan Brooks, The Guardian
“Franzen brings to this novel a refreshing simplicity . . . What remains is family drama as high art. What remains is Franzen’s gift for interiority, his uncanny ability to take us into minds as fraught and depraved as our own.” —Erin Somers, The A.V. Club
"A marvelous novel." —Becca Rothfeld, The Atlantic
"Absolutely engrossing . . . There’s not a scenario in [Crossroads] that doesn’t ring true." —Allison Arieff, San Francisco Chronicle
"Superbly rendered . . . [Crossroads is] a supremely skillful book, ingenious and practiced in its execution, on point in its small, historical details . . . ” —Walter Kirn, Air Mail
"Franzen’s best novel." —Sasha Frere-Jones, 4Columns
"[A] superb domestic epic . . . Franzen’s faith in fiction as a means to get at questions of goodness and righteousness is unshakable." —Mark Athitakis, USA Today (Four out of Four Stars)
"This is peak Franzen, with richly created characters, conflicts and plot . . . The writing is a marvel." —Rob Merrill, Associated Press
"Excellent . . . With Marion, [Franzen] reminds us that he’s actually one of our great novelists of female fury . . . Jonathan Franzen really is one of the great novelists of his generation. Crossroads stands ready and willing to prove it." —Constance Grady, Vox
"[Franzen] imbues his books with big ideas, in this case about responsibility to family, self, God, country, and one’s fellow man, among other matters, all the while digging deep into his characters’ emotions, experiences, desires, and doubts in a way that will please readers seeking to connect to books heart-first . . . Franzen’s intensely absorbing novel is amusing, excruciating, and at times unexpectedly uplifting—in a word, exquisite.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Franzen returns with a sweeping and masterly examination of the shifting culture of early 1970s America, the first in a trilogy . . . Throughout, Franzen exhibits his remarkable ability to build suspense through fraught interpersonal dynamics. It’s irresistible." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[A] masterful, Tolstoian saga . . . Franzen adroitly portrays eternal generational conflicts . . . This masterpiece of social realism vividly captures each character’s internal conflicts as a response to and a reflection of societal expectations, while Franzen expertly explores the fissions of domestic life, mining the rich mineral beneath the sediments of familial discord. In this first volume of a promised trilogy, Franzen is in rarified peak form." —Booklist (starred review)
“Franzen pens complex, densely layered characters . . . with America’s heartland functioning as a stage upon which the tension between enduring values and societal change is enacted . . . Franzen is keenly aware that human struggle is defined by understanding and acceptance and that it is generational, ideas he admirably captures here.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“[Franzen] does not disappoint . . . [He writes] with penetrating insight delivered through incisive sentences . . . I can’t wait to read what happens next.” —BookPage (starred review)
Library Journal
★ 09/01/2021
Written between 1960 and 1990, John Updike's "Rabbit" series reflected on the fluidity of U.S. culture and the puncturing of American exceptionalism. Similarly, Franzen introduces the Hildebrandts, a Chicago family struggling to navigate cultural revolution and the Vietnam War, in the first volume of a trilogy that will trace generations of this family up to the 21st century. Though the story centers on Russ, a depressed assistant pastor dwelling on his perceived humiliation by a colleague, the narrative constellates among his wife Marion, burdened by traumatic past, and their three children: college-age Clem, popular high schooler Becky, and brilliant but troubled Perry. Each member of the family struggles with a nagging sense of emptiness and searches for an authentic sense of self through adultery, drugs, religion, or war. As in The Corrections, Franzen pens complex, densely layered characters with backstories that require the narrative to jump backward and forward in time, with America's heartland functioning as a stage upon which the tension between enduring values and societal change is enacted. VERDICT Much like Updike, Franzen is keenly aware that human struggle is defined by understanding and acceptance and that it is generational, ideas he admirably captures here.—Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY
NOVEMBER 2021 - AudioFile
Jonathan Franzen stuns listeners with a sharp, relevant family saga, set in 1970s Chicago. Narrator David Pittu superbly transports the listener into the lives of the Hildebrandts, a family with many secrets. In typical Franzen fashion, the storytelling is the center of this work, with deep character studies and taut interwoven perspectives. Narration alternates between Russ, Marion, and their four children, Clem, Becky, Perry, and Judson. The story, which unravels mostly on a single day, will have listeners on the edge of their seats. This first novel in a slated trilogy called A Key to All Mythologies dazzles, and Pittu’s narration keeps the tension strong. M.R.R. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-06-29
This first novel in an ambitious trilogy tracks a suburban Chicago family in a time of personal and societal turmoil.
It says a lot that, at almost 600 pages, Franzen’s latest novel, set amid the waning years of the Vietnam War, leaves you wanting more. That it does so is also very good news: It’s the first in what promises to be a sprawling trilogy, continuing to the present day, which the author has titled A Key to All Mythologies in what is presumably a wink at its far-from-modest ambitions—yes, à la Middlemarch. That reference is classic Franzen, who imbues his books with big ideas, in this case about responsibility to family, self, God, country, and one’s fellow man, among other matters, all the while digging deep into his characters’ emotions, experiences, desires, and doubts in a way that will please readers seeking to connect to books heart-first. Here, the story follows two generations of the Hildebrandt family, headed by Russ, the associate pastor of a church in the fictional town of New Prospect, Illinois, who, when we first meet him in the lead-up to Christmas 1971, is nursing a crush on a recently widowed parishioner and a grudge against the groovily charismatic leader of the church’s popular youth group, Crossroads, in which three of Russ’ four children are variously involved. Russ’ wife, Marion, who has gained weight over the years and lost her pre-maternal intensity and with it her husband’s sexual interest, is nursing a few secret preoccupations of her own, as are the couple’s three oldest children, Clem, Becky, and Perry. Each of the five characters, among whose perspectives Franzen adroitly toggles, is struggling with matters of morality and integrity, privilege and purpose, driven in part by the dueling desires for independence and connection. Their internal battles—to fight in an unjust war or unjustly let others fight in your stead, to fight their way out of a marriage or fight to stay in it, to fight for sanity or surrender to madness, to fight to define themselves and determine their paths or to cede that control to others, to name a few—are set against the backdrop of an era in which “love” is everywhere but empathy is in short supply, where hugs are liberally dispensed but real connection’s harder to come by.
Franzen’s intensely absorbing novel is amusing, excruciating, and at times unexpectedly uplifting—in a word, exquisite.
