A review by jfaberrit
Purity by Jonathan Franzen

3.0

It has always seemed to me that Jonathan Franzen has gotten something of a bad rap with regard to literary misogyny, somehow becoming the face of the problem even though he didn't really seem to be particularly misogynistic, the "great author" always held up as the face of male authorship and its privileges. I still think much of the criticism directed his way on that issue remains unfair, but I wonder if it got to him here. While Pip Tyler is certainly his strongest female protagonist to date, and the heart of what could have been a much better story overall, the rest of his female characters here come off extremely negatively. It is possible to like a book without liking the main characters, and lately it seems that antiheroes and villains-as-protagonists are more common than not; it is much harder to like a book when the author himself seems so unsympathetic toward so many of his characters, particularly the women. Anabel comes off like a cartoon feminist from both Tom and Pip's descriptions, Katya more a figure of scorn than her actions would indicate being fair, Anagret a cold and emotionless foil via Andreas, even Leila a muddle of emotional reactions without much by way of a plan. Add this to the Andreas sections of the book, which are both the least believable as well as the most extraneous, and they drag down a rather solid story about searching for family into a jumble featuring the battle of the sexes, modern technology and its discontents, something never very well thought out about mental illness, are vs. capitalism, etc. This could have been a better book, and Franzen is easily talented enough to do it, but this one missed pretty badly.