Despite the book’s grim realism, I liked its insights, the flashes of recognition I experienced when I read the older characters’ dialogue. Like the Midwestern Enid Lambert, my grandmother says “it tickled me” as in “I got a kick out of it”. I’m not sure if Grandma would be tickled by Franzen’s depiction of a typical family from St. Jude (which I assumed was a cover for St. Louis, the author’s hometown), but I found the storytelling gripping and the characters three-dimensional. Personally, I feel more affection for this part of the world than the three Lambert children who fled when they sought more stylish lifestyles in Pennsylvania and New York. Still, the theme of regional ambivalence, the act of reflecting critically about your origins is an interesting one for this transplanted Missourian.
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