Freedom

Jonathan Franzen, Fourth Estate, 570 pages, hardback, £20

Freedom describes with unsettling perception the destructive dynamics of relationships — between married couples, between parents and children, sisters and brothers, adolescent lovers, and between the powerful and the weak.

It centres on the lives of Patty and Walter Berglund and their two children, and the couple’s rock musician friend Richard Katz.

There are searing accounts of the greed, destructiveness and corruption of corporate America — the lies and brutality and exploitation of the Iraq war; the ruthless manipulation of decent eco-warriors to make billionaires even richer; the relentless obliteration of nature and Walter’s beloved songbird, the cerulean warbler — the literary mockingbird of the 21st century.

Freedom is, in most places at least, a masterful piece of writing. Politically, Franzen may be trying to provoke his readers to question how they are using their freedoms, and to warn against the Tea Party’s ugly notion of freedom that rejects any idea of collectivism and the common good.

But Freedom is also about the freedom to wage war and to obliterate species, the freedom to demolish communities, destroy the planet and dowse dreams, the freedom to bear arms and to consume and compete — all so the privileged classes have the freedom to live their lives.