Purity by Jonathan Franzen

I love Jonathan Franzen, I really do. It’s his way with words, a sort of cutting to the bone in his prose that is somehow elegant in style, if not in content. His language is real. However, the premise for this book is really nothing short of ridiculous. It’s about a girl searching for her identity and through an elaborate plot, which reads like some sort of conspiracy theory, she finds her way. It is utterly unbelievable. I’ve had this sort of problem with his wacky stories before, specifically the guy who runs off to South America in the last novel of his I read. Mostly Franzen’s humour and language redeem him, but this time the book was so very long – about 800 pages or something – and with so much silliness in it that I really can’t forgive him!