His wife Enid, a compulsive peacemaker with just a hint of Edith Bunker in her frazzled “niceness,” nervously subverts Alfred’s stoicism, while lobbying for “one last Christmas” gathering of her scattered family at their home in the placid haven of St. Patriarch Alfred, a retired railroad engineer, drifts in and out of hallucinatory lapses inflicted by Parkinson’s, while stubbornly clinging to passé conservative ideals. The story’s set in the Midwest, New York City, and Philadelphia, and focused on the tortured interrelationships of the five adult Lamberts. The recent brouhaha about the death of realistic fiction may well be put to rest by Franzen’s stunning third novel: a symphonic exploration of family dynamics and social conflict and change that leaps light-years beyond its critically praised predecessors The Twenty-Seventh City (1998) and Strong Motion (1992).
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