Outside Reading: Book Review

Freedom
By: Sam Tanenhaus

This book review is about "Freedom" by Jonathon Franzen. In this review Tanenhaus is not just stating facts about the book and showing its strength an weaknesses but he is praising the book quite a bit, and compares it to Frenzen's previous work, "The Corrections". He describes how Franzen has done an excellent job of using the politically charged connotation of freedom to his advantage. He praises the book with diction that support the complicated themes he says are present in the book. He uses words like intricately, majestic, and dynamically. He also uses vivid imagery to praise Franzen and draw his comparison to "The Corrections". At one point in the review he says,"Franzen cracked open the opaque shell of postmodernism, tweezed out its tangled circuitry and inserted in its place the warm beating heart of an authentic humanism." This is a vivid way for him to create an image of just how important he thinks this work is. Drawing connections to Dickens an other writers based on the techniques that Franzen used makes the reader more intrigued by the review because it may be a book worthy of the comparison to "those giants". This is one of the strengths of the piece, along with the imagery and his use of details, but one of the weaknesses is his heavy handed praise, it makes it seem as though there is no other option but to love this book, and it will turn readers off to this book if they generally don't like books of this genre.
This review is from a new historicism perspective because it takes into account the social environment at the time, and obviously the author's background and previous book.