JONATHAN FRANZEN
FREEDOM
Copyright
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2010
First published in US by Farrar Straus and Giroux
Copyright © Jonathan Franzen 2010.
Cover images © Danita Delimont / Getty Images (bird); Mr Sky High / Shutterstock (feathers)
The right of Jonathan Franzen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007269761
Ebook Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9780007419715
Version: 2017-03-09
Praise
‘Franzen pulls off the extraordinary feat of making the lives of his characters more real to you than your own’
DAVID HARE, Guardian, Books of the Year
‘By the end of Freedom you may feel you understand its protagonists better than you know anyone in the world around you’
NICHOLAS HYTNER, Evening Standard, Books of the Year
‘No question about it: Freedom swept everything before it in intricately observed, humane, unprejudiced armfuls’
PHILIP HENSHER, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year
‘Head and shoulders above any other book this year’
SAM MENDES, Observer, Books of the Year
‘A masterpiece. Like all great novels, Freedom does not just tell an engrossing story. It illuminates, through the steady radiance of its author’s profound moral intelligence, the world we thought we knew’
SAM TANENHAUS, New York Times
‘Without question Freedom is a book that grabs hold of you. When I was in the middle I thought of its characters even while I wasn’t reading about them. Franzen’s skills as a writer are on giddy and unapologetic display: his superb facility for writing dialogue; his willingness to be shockingly, entertainingly dirty on matters of sex; and his terrific and terrifying sense of humour. I was completely absorbed’
CURTIS SITTENFELD, Observer
‘In this stupendous, magnificent, unforgettable novel, family has never seemed a more urgent and gripping subject. Witty and rich … bold and sage and moving’
PHILIP HENSHER, Spectator
‘Franzen is an extremely sharp, witty and exciting writer, with a sense of ambition that harks back to the golden age, a time before good novels weren’t popular, and popular novels weren’t good’
CRAIG BROWN, Daily Mail
‘Enormously readable and totally convincing’
PHILIP ZIEGLER, Spectator, Books of the Year
‘A great novel about America. Rarely has the land of the free been scrutinised with such a sharp but loving eye’
ROBERT DOUGLAS-FAIRHURST, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year
‘A cat’s cradle of family life, and if the measure of a good book is its afterburn, Freedom is a great book’
KIRSTY WARK, Observer, Books of the Year
‘A portrait of a world poised on the brink of combustion, and a nation losing its superpowers, shot through the viewfinder of one long, difficult (are there any other sort?) marriage’
RACHEL JOHNSON, Evening Standard, Books of the Year
‘It had me absolutely hooked’
MARK WATSON, Observer, Books of the Year
‘His most deeply felt novel yet—a novel that turns out to be both a compelling biography of a dysfunctional family and an indelible portrait of our times’
MICHIKO KAKUTANI, New York Times
‘Freedom is full of brilliances of description, spot-on dialogue and characters caught with deadly accuracy’
PETER KEMP, Sunday Times
‘An extraordinary stylist. In dialogue that conveys each palpitation of the heart, every wince of the conscience … Franzen conveys his psychological acuity’
RON CHARLES, Washington Post
Dedication
To Susan Golomb and Jonathan Galassi
Epigraph
Go together,
You precious winners all; your exultation
Partake to everyone. I, an old turtle, Will wing me to some withered bough, and there My mate, that’s never to be found again, Lament till I am lost.
— The Winter’s Tale
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
GOOD NEIGHBORS
Autobiography of Patty Berglund by Patty Berglund
Chapter 1 - Agreeable
Chapter 2 - Best Friends
Chapter 3 - Free Markets Foster Competition
2004
MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL
WOMANLAND
THE NICE MAN’S ANGER
ENOUGH ALREADY
BAD NEWS
THE FIEND OF WASHINGTON
A Sort of Letter to Her Reader by Patty Berglund
Chapter 4 - Six Years
CANTERBRIDGE