The Discomfort Zone

Jonathan Franzen is one of those rare authors who read their own work with skill. He may not have quite the panache that a professional audiobook narrator would bring, but his lively and well-paced reading of his memoir is delivered in a pleasant voice that is easy to listen to. When he's remembering his complex relationship with his parents, he is fascinated and mystified; when he considers the state of the country, he's furious; and when he's recalling his early pursuit of sex, he is painfully funny. Through it all, he is articulate. Franzen says that in real life he's a "bit of a mumbler." Can't tell it from this excellent production. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

Starred review from May 29, 2006
National Book Award–winner Franzen's first foray into memoir begins and ends with his mother's death in Franzen's adulthood. In between, he takes a sarcastic, humorous and intimate look at the painful awkwardness of adolescence. As a young observer rather than a participant, Franzen offers a fresh take on the sometimes tumultuous, sometimes uneventful America of the 1960s and '70s. A not very popular, bookish kid, Franzen (The Corrections
) and his high school buddies, in one of the book's most memorable episodes, attempt to loop a tire, ring-toss–style, over their school's 40-foot flag pole as part of a series of flailing pranks. Franzen watches his older brother storm out of the house toward a wayward hippe life, while he ultimately follows along his father's straight-and-narrow path. Franzen traces back to his teenage years the roots of his enduring trouble with women, his pursuit of a precarious career as a writer and his recent life-affirming obsession with bird-watching. While Franzen's family was unmarked by significant tragedy, the common yet painful contradictions of growing up are at the heart of this wonderful book (parts of which appeared in the New Yorker
): "You're miserable and ashamed if you don't believe your adolescent troubles matter, but you're stupid if you do."