Purity

Title: Purity

Author: Jonathan Franzen

Genre: Historical? Political?

Time: 14.7 hours
2015 Book Challenge: a book with more than 500 pages

This book was one of the last few books from the recent batch that I got.  When I read it, I didn’t bother to read the description and this is my first book of this author, so I had no idea what to expect.  I figured that if it was bad, I’ll just go on to the next book. 

I seemed to me the characters were purposely written to be “unlikeable.”  It felt like the author was going for the “realistic” or perhaps the dysfunctional/imperfect type characters.  There is no feisty heroine or a sweet ingénue to root for.   There is no dashing hero who will save the day.  What it had was this charismatic Edward Snowden type character who had pedo-bear tendencies harboring a murderous past (who really I thought had some sort of incestuous relationship with his mother that’s why he was so messed up.. nope, apparently she just a slept around a lot).  Then there is the whiny titular character who goes by the name Pip because she hates her name.  She didn’t actually whine a lot, but came off as whiny to me.  Then her mother is this tedious, wearisome woman who was secretly a billionaire, but she didn’t want any of the money.  I did like Tom Aberant and Leila Helou.  Well..maybe the future version of Tom.  The past version could have used some balls.  Leila had her faults but I sorta get her, I do wish she’d just leave her husband. 

The book switched back and forth between present time and the past.  The 1950s flashback to Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall was a pretty interesting read.  The writing transported me to this tumultuous period and gave me a feel for political climate at that time.  But since I’m not exactly well versed in that particular era of history, I dunno if the details were more non-fiction or just totally made up. 

All in all, this is definitely not a light read.  But it’s a good one if you’re looking for something with more meat.  It's a bit long, almost 600 pages but the story moves along pretty well.