Don't let the fact that this is an Oprah BookClub selection deter you from reading it .
I want to get quickly to the Gist of the Story because this summary will be long (I shall try and be briefer, though, than Franzen). Please stay tuned for my reader’s notes near the end of the article on “What Oprah Viewers Should Have Asked Jonathan Franzen…and Didn’t.” Quickly now,
Gist of the Story (Spoilers Ahead)
This story is told from different viewpoints: the wife Patty Berglund, the husband Walter Berglund, the son Joey Berglund and the former roommate/rocker/family friend Richard Katz. While the story is told in third person point of view, there are chapters where Patty writes an autobiography and writes of herself in the third person. Sounds complicated? Hey, we’ve only just opened the nearly 600 page book.
The story spans nearly thirty years and is generally chronological. Patty, a competitive basketball star, has many shortcomings in large ways. She doesn’t seem to be able to make friends, although she is very friendly. She is raped while in high school and the incident is all but cleared away by her mother with political and social aspirations. She has other dysfunctional relationships, including a horrible one with her roommate named Eliza, who seems to idolize Patty. She then meets Walter, her future husband, and falls for his slutty roommate, Richard Katz. Love triangle? Yes, big basis for the next twenty years being set-up right before your eyes.
After trying to run away with Richard, Patty realizes that Walter will give her the love and idolizing she desires, much like, but not as creepy as, Eliza. They marry and are “nice” to one another for many years. Things start to fall apart when the object of her lavish affection, her son Joey, decides to move in with his girlfriend and her family next door.
Patty ends up sleeping with Richard and then never seeing him again (not of her choosing). Richard goes on to record a popular album called Nameless Lake named for the lake where they did the deed. He masks this by claiming his love for his former lead singer who offed herself with sleeping pills and even Patty buys it. Mostly.
The betrayal doesn’t come out into the open for awhile and in that while something is going rotten in Patty and Walter’s relationship. A festering perhaps. They move from Minnesota to Washington, D.C. and Walter gets involved with a foundation to create environmental spaces for the bird pictured on the cover: the Cerulean Blue Warbler. Somehow his modelesque assistant has taken up residence in his home upstairs and Patty is not liking it one bit. Of course, his assistant is young and only has eyes for Walter.
Walter tries to be a good husband, but when Richard passes along the autobiography Patty has written including their brief affair and her longer torch she’s carried for Richard, Walter goes berserk, throws Patty out and immediately sleeps with his assistant, Lalitha.
Things go bad for Walter, he loses his job, Lalitha accidentally drives off a cliff, Walter becomes a hermit at Nameless Lake and starts taking his vengeance on cats.
Patty comes by and refuses to leave until Walter speaks with her, nearly freezes to death and is revived by Walter. They get back together. Happily ever after?
The Questions Oprah Didn’t Ask
What are the questions you wanted to ask the author?
So, the interview with Franzen was today, Monday, December 6th, 2010. Oprah did nothing on her show with Franzen but berate him for talking smack about being chosen for her book club for his other novel The Corrections nearly nine years ago (read this, too!). Tune in after the show online to see the viewers ask more questions. Here’s that interview, about 31 minutes long and very good.
While there were some great questions asked – and some not answered – I would like to ask these questions:
- Why did the mistress get the last word in the book with the dedication of Nameless Lake property to her memory?
- Why was the Joey character important to much more of anything after the first chapter?
- Were all the women symbolic of birds?
- Why do Joey and Walter make obscene amounts of money? Were they ultimately selling themselves out?
- What is the deal with religion or lack thereof?
I felt like I had a lot more questions, but the interview was good in sorting out which ones are important to ask. Franzen, at one point, asked the audience if they would like him to tell them authoritatively on why one part of the story happened as it did or would they like to interpret it their own way. Good stuff, Franzen. My opinion is, once the book is published, the writer becomes only another reader (but perhaps one more intimate with the story).
First Lines, Last Words
The news about Walter Berglund wasn’t picked up locally – he and Patty had moved away to Washington two years earlier and meant nothing to St. Paul now – but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city as not to read the New York Times.
To this day, free access to the preserve is granted only to birds and to residents of Canterbridge Estates, through a gate whose lock combination is known to them, beneath a small ceramic sign with a picture of the pretty young dark-skinned girl after whom the preserve is named.
Quotable
I hate sunshine!
Book Rating
Cerulean Blue Warbler: the little bird that causes all the big trouble. Overall Book Rating 5/5
Beside the Bed, Sleepless for the Story, Regifting this Read all 5.0! I don’t think there is a better book you could find this year. Go get one today.
My name is Britty and I'm chief bottle-washer at this site. I'm a book-lover, student and freelance writer when I'm not being a mom of three and wife of one.
