genre: #contemporary #literary
first publication: October 5, 2021
my rating: 10/10
The talent of making ordinary things fascinating, or Jonathan Franzen and his genius.
Writing about his characters and their ordinary lives, Franzen slowly, easily, perhaps, casually dissects the reader. He shows that he knows everything about you. Sentence by sentence, he makes you believe there's nothing to hide and that you cannot have any secrets. And, in fact, there are no secrets. Flowing and deprived of any maudlinness, whereas anything but dry, language gets under your skin, putting you in a vulnerable position.
Yet, the book is not about you, the characters are not meant to represent you. No, you cannot be them, you cannot make their mistakes, you cannot be that blind in your ignorance and philistinism. However, why are you feeling seen through?
I, for sure, can praise “Crossroads” for just being what it is. However, I do not like doing that, and I won’t recommend it since I don’t like recommending books. “Crossroads” just made it to be my best-of-the-year book and to be one of my all-time favourites. I definitely should have read it after finishing all other Franzen’s novels, so I won’t be comparing them to the standards set by this one.
