Jonathan Franzen — Freedom

Fourth Estate 2010 Paperback, 570pp. Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St Paul - the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbour who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter - environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man - she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz - outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival - still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street 'a very different kind of neighbour' - an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes? Stamped 'Reading copy'; small crease to the cover. (ISBN: 9780007318520). Very Good.