Freedom by Jonathan Franzen is the New Oprah Book Club Selection

All the rumours that have been buzzing around the internet over the past few weeks about the identity of the next Oprah book club selection were confirmed earlier today when it was announced that Oprah's next pick is Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.

Check out the reviews and interview links below for the great buzz the book has been getting-even before the big announcement!



“Franzen has an uncanny knack for capturing the torturously self-justifying rhetoric and trendy slang of educated Gen Xers rebelling against their suburban childhoods by seeking “authenticity” in the grungy core of the American city. The details of time and place and attitude are so sharp as to induce frequent wincing.” Toronto Star interview, review

“Freedom is filled with vividly rendered characters.” National Post interview, review

Franzen’s coup is that he has figured out how to be both entertaining, sharp-witted and accessible while maintaining a sense of higher purpose. I “thoroughly enjoyed this intellectual soap opera of love, sex, liberal guilt and flawed parenting (viz. Philip Larkin), and got sucked into the travails of the Berglunds and their constellation.” The Globe and Mail interview, review.

“A superb confrontation of the family construct and the illusion of liberty. Written with a heavy hand and edited with a light one, it is correctly being called the year's required North American fiction.” Vancouver Sun

“[Franzen] has composed a symphonic account of the pursuit of purpose and the turmoil of change. His locomotive sentences are vehicles of hysterically withering observations and exact imagery, sermons that articulate complex concepts with mirthful clarity. These fully formed characters inhabit amplified worlds that adroitly parody and illuminate our own.” Georgia Straight