Jonathan Franzen is one of my favourite authors with whom I have a real love/hate relationship. Some of his works made me angry because they were quite a waste of time and some I read more than twice. The latter applies to the great novel Freedom, which is a thick "ham" of a book and tells the story of the Berglund family over a period of 30 years, touching upon topics such as class, identity and troublesome relationships.

There is no climax to this book and the story is basically the path the reader follows. The characters are not really likable but this is not really the point, the story sucks you in and makes you keep on reading, confronting you with conflicts and world views that encourage you to think about right and wrong.

I would give a five star rating for the book, HOWEVER the audio book, which I got because I wanted someone to read it to me, only receives two stars because some books aren't meant to be heard. The story is too long and too complex to listen to. I got confused sometimes and didn't know where I left story and needed to skip back ten tracks to get into it again. The narrators were also too monotonous for my taste and even listening to it while walking, I almost fell asleep.

Do yourself a favour and READ this book instead of having it read to you.