“Crossroads” is a big novel, nearly 600 pages. If I missed some of the acid of his earlier novels, well, this one has powerful compensations. “Crossroads” is warmer than anything he’s yet written, wider in its human sympathies, weightier of image and intellect. And the overarching title for the series, “A Key to All Mythologies,” may be a nod to “Middlemarch,” but it also sounds as if Franzen were channeling Joseph Campbell, or Robert Bly, or Tolkien, or Yes.Īnd yet here’s the novel itself, and it’s a mellow, marzipan-hued ’70s-era heartbreaker. Good trilogies rarely announce themselves as such at the start. Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, “ Crossroads,” is the first in a projected trilogy, which is reason to be wary.
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