Oprah Winfrey announced this morning that she has picked Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom for her book club. Readers can now start a reading journal for the novel or ponder the book club’s special reading questions.
Thanks to MobyLives, we had the inside scoop on this pick earlier this week. Old grudges have healed with this book club choice. In 2001, Franzen famously mentioned that “I considered turning it down” when he was offered a spot on Winfrey’s show and was un-invited from the show. Over at The Daily Beast, Sarah Weinman wrote about the pick, getting our thoughts about the choice.
Here’s why Winfrey picked it: “In his latest novel, Jonathan Franzen returns to fiction with a comic and tragic epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the responsibility of privilege. Charting the characters’ mistakes and joys as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever-changing and confusing world, Freedom is an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.”