On the odd occasion it's good to know as little as possible about a subject . I'm pretty sure my binge reading of reviews of The Social Network contributed to how dissapointed I was with the film and I ran a similar risk when I started reading Freedom after over-indulging on too many opinion pieces.
It's hard to write about a book that's been so exhaustively talked about already so I'll tell you this; it's definitely as awesome as the majority of those opinion pieces suggest. The book, as I'm sure you know, follows the very complicated, very middle class lives of Patty and Walter Berglund who meet at college, marry, move to the suburbs and have kids. You'll notice the deliberate absence of "falling in love" in that sentence because that part is definitely debatable.
It really is the ultimate book club book (Oprah knows what she's doing) as I don't think I've ever felt such a strong need to discuss every tiny aspect of book with anyone who will listen and it's so easy to read (my friend Huey got through it one sitting and it's the size of dictionary, or at least what I remember the size of a dictionary to be. It's been a while.) Anyway there's definitely a lot to say and many ways to interpret what happens.
See, I thought it was about settling. Patty "settles" for marrying Walter and that decision affects every aspect of her life and particularly her relationships with her friends, family and especially, kids. It reminds me of that Thoreau quote, "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation". That was Patty for shiz. She was faking it and there's only so long you can keep that up. I think a lot of people settle for someone so they can get on with a picture-perfect suburban life thinking that's what happiness and freedom is. Eventually they'll realise that those things can't fill all their emotional and intellectual needs so they self destruct (and the blast effects everyone) and then they probably get divorced and go on a year long holiday to find themselves in Italy, India and Bali... oh wait no, that's another book.
It's probably worth mentioning at this point that I didn't like any of the characters. I mean they were fascinating but also deplorable. It's not by any means an uplifiting story. It's 562 pages of sad, frustrated, spoilt people making each others lives miserable. Wow, this isn't the sales pitch I thought it would be when I started writing.
Anyway back to the different interpretations of it's themes. My friend Jacqui thought it was about about the tension between safety/security and freedom, and how in the west we are hungry for both and demand them as our due. She thought the whole environmental theme as back-drop was what lifted the book into 'portrait of our times' territory ie we want the freedom to do what we want with the land and earth, but we are destroying it in the name of that freedom, just like we destroyed Iraq in the name of freedom. And just like Patty destroyed Walter in the name of freedom.
So, yeh, it was heaps deep.
You should definitely add it your reading list.
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