It's always hard to review a complete brick of a book (literally speaking), and this one is quite something.

Franzen has almost entirely adhered to the simple point-and-tell way of God informing the reader of what happens throughout the book, interspersed with a few character perspective moments.

Walter and Patty Berglund are a smart, suburban, modern married couple who are in turmoil and seemingly cannot come to terms with this. They avoid each other rather, avoiding their issues apart from when they fight, which is like a cold, staged play, reminiscent of Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" in some affects.

Franzen's main strengths are the storytelling, the parallel plots and treating the reader like an intelligent person. At the same time, the best bits of this book read way better than a very long episode of "Desperate Housewives", which it often reminded me of. At its worst, the book reminded me of a very long, outstretched and bloated episode of "Desperate Housewives".

Some might say this book pin-points the human condition of relationships in modern-day western civilisation, and I'll say it does to a certain extent. Franzen is very good at writing matter-of-factly when it comes to describing human emotions which I think works to his advantage: the reader is allowed to think for herself/himself and the characters of the book come out a lot differently than if Franzen would have applied sappy adjectives throughout.

All in all, this is a big book, and I think its flaws and brilliance is part of what it's all about: people's inner worlds, as felt inside and projected outside. Highly recommendable, masterfully written despite a few lows, ending up with being one of the best fictional books I've read in a few years.