Reviews and Comments

Reading The Corrections felt like sitting at a long family table where every conversation carries years of unfinished business. Jonathan Franzen follows the Lambert family as they move toward one last Christmas together, and I felt the quiet tension from the opening pages. The novel centers on Alfred and Enid Lambert and their three adult children, each struggling with private disappointments that refuse to stay private. As I read, I felt both amused and unsettled by how familiar their conflicts seemed.

Alfred’s physical decline and moral rigidity gave the story a sense of slow pressure. I felt sympathy for him even when his silence created distance. Enid, by contrast, unsettled me in a different way. Her desire for harmony felt sincere, yet her refusal to see reality clearly made me uneasy. Watching her push for a perfect family gathering stirred mixed emotions in me. I understood her longing, but I also felt the cost of denial.

The children’s stories pulled me in deeply. Gary’s struggle with responsibility and resentment felt painfully realistic. Chip’s collapse into professional and personal chaos carried a sharp edge of irony that made me laugh, then pause. Denise’s quiet competence and hidden restlessness felt like the calm surface of deeper uncertainty. As their lives unfolded across different cities and crises, I sensed how distance had not freed them from their family, only reshaped its hold.

Franzen’s writing made me feel exposed as a reader. His attention to detail left little room for comfort. I often felt judged, not by the narrator, but by recognition. The novel examines ambition, aging, illness, and regret without offering easy resolutions. That honesty stayed with me.

By the final pages, I felt a subdued sadness mixed with respect. The Corrections does not promise healing. It suggests that understanding may be the closest thing to it. Closing the book, I felt aware of how families rarely correct themselves cleanly. They adapt, fracture, and persist, carrying their flaws forward with stubborn endurance.

When I read The Old Man and the Sea, I felt as if silence itself had taken shape on the page. Hemingway’s story follows Santiago, an aging fisherman who has gone eighty four days without a catch. From the beginning, I sensed his quiet endurance. His struggle is simple in outline, yet heavy with meaning. As he sails far into the Gulf Stream and hooks the great marlin, the novel becomes less about fishing and more about dignity.

I felt deeply connected to Santiago’s patience. His respect for the fish, his belief in skill over luck, and his refusal to surrender stirred something personal in me. The long battle at sea is written with restraint, yet I felt every ache in his hands and every hour that passed beneath the sun. Hemingway’s language gave me no shelter. It forced me to sit with exhaustion, pain, and resolve without distraction.

The boy, Manolin, added warmth to the story. Their bond softened the harshness of Santiago’s isolation. I felt comforted by their quiet loyalty to each other, especially when the old man seemed most alone. When the sharks arrive and tear apart the marlin, I felt anger rise in me. Yet Santiago’s response, calm and unbroken, left a deeper impression than victory ever could.

By the time Santiago returns with only the skeleton of his great catch, I felt both sadness and admiration. He had lost the fish, but not himself. The village may doubt him, but the sea has measured him honestly. Closing the book, I carried a sense of calm strength. The novel reminded me that success is not always defined by what remains visible. Sometimes it is defined by the courage to endure fully, even when the world strips the reward away.

When I read Demian, I felt as though I had been quietly invited into an inner conversation I had avoided for years. Hermann Hesse tells the story through Emil Sinclair, a young boy who grows into self awareness by confronting the divided nature of his world. As I followed Sinclair’s journey, I felt the tension between innocence and experience settle inside me. The novel does not rush this change. Instead, it unfolds like a slow awakening, one thought at a time.

Sinclair’s early struggle between the safe, moral world of his family and the darker pull of independence felt deeply familiar. I remember feeling uneasy as he crossed that invisible line, guided by Max Demian, whose calm confidence fascinated me. Demian never felt like a simple mentor. He appeared more like a mirror, reflecting truths Sinclair was not yet ready to name. That subtle guidance stirred my own questions about identity and choice.

The novel’s symbols stayed with me. The mark of Cain, the idea of Abraxas, and the recurring presence of dreams gave the story a spiritual weight. I felt challenged rather than comforted by these ideas. They asked me to accept contradiction instead of resolution. Hesse’s language made introspection feel unavoidable. At times, I had to pause, not from confusion, but from recognition.

As Sinclair grows, the story shifts from childhood conflict to a deeper search for meaning. His isolation, his brief peace, and his eventual acceptance of uncertainty felt honest to me. I sensed that the novel was less about answers and more about courage, the courage to live without borrowing beliefs from others.

By the final pages, I felt a quiet clarity mixed with unease. Demian did not leave me inspired in a simple way. It left me aware. The book reminded me that becoming oneself is rarely gentle. It requires facing both light and shadow and learning to walk forward without denying either.

When I read Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, I felt as if I had been invited into a private room where every story carried a soft echo. J. D. Salinger writes with a closeness that made me feel more like a listener than a reader. Both novellas revolve around Seymour Glass, yet he appears mostly in absence, shadow, or memory. That distance stirred something in me. I found myself searching for him in every line, just as the characters do.

The first novella follows Buddy Glass during Seymour’s abandoned wedding day. The awkward carriage ride with guests who misunderstand Seymour left me tense. I felt Buddy’s loyalty pressing against their confusion. His voice is observant, careful, and at times surprisingly tender. As he sorts through the fragments of the day, I sensed how love for a sibling can be both grounding and painful. I caught myself feeling protective of Seymour, even though I had barely met him.

The second novella deepened that feeling. In Seymour: An Introduction, Buddy tries to capture who his brother truly was. The attempt feels raw, almost unfinished, and that vulnerability held my attention. Buddy circles around Seymour’s brilliance, humor, and strangeness, admitting how impossible it is to contain a person on paper. I recognized that struggle. Writing about someone you love is its own kind of exposure. As Buddy sifted through memories, notes, and impressions, I felt the weight of admiration mixed with grief.

What moved me most was the sense that Seymour’s complexity challenged everyone who knew him. He was gentle, intense, and unreachable in equal measure. Reading about him made me think about the people in my life who resist simple explanation. Salinger’s style, pared down but charged with feeling, carried me through both novellas with a steady pull.

By the time I closed the book, I felt a lingering quiet. The Glass family had drawn me in with their honesty and their fractures. The experience left me aware of how memory holds its own truth, shaped less by facts and more by the ache of wanting to understand someone fully, even when you know you never will.

Reading Absalom, Absalom! felt like trying to understand a storm by studying the debris it left behind. William Faulkner tells the story of Thomas Sutpen through tangled voices, shifting memories, and competing explanations. As I moved through the novel, I felt both challenged and strangely compelled, as if each retelling pushed me deeper into the soil of the Sutpen family’s past. The structure demanded patience from me, but it also rewarded me with a feeling of discovery every time a detail snapped into place.

The rise and collapse of Sutpen’s grand design, built on ambition and blindness, made me uneasy. I could feel the strain of a man trying to construct his own destiny without considering the lives he would break along the way. The voices of Quentin, Rosa, Mr. Compson, and Shreve layered the story with doubt and emotion. I often found myself shifting my own judgment as their perspectives collided. In those moments I felt the weight of history pressing against personal memory, blurring the line between truth and interpretation.

The South in the novel felt haunted. Its traditions, silences, and wounds shaped every character, and I reacted to that heaviness with a mix of sadness and frustration. The racial and moral implications of Sutpen’s actions stood out sharply. They shaped the tragedy more than any single decision he made. As I followed the unraveling of his legacy, I sensed how tightly the past can cling, even when everyone wants to escape it.

By the time I closed the book, I felt drained but more alert to how stories can fracture when too many people try to hold them. Absalom, Absalom! left me with the lingering awareness that understanding a life, or a nation, requires facing the shadows it would rather hide.

When I read Love in the Time of Cholera, I felt as if I were moving through a world slowed by heat, longing, and the stubborn rhythm of memory. Marquez builds a love story that stretches across decades, and I found myself pulled into its patience. Following Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza felt like listening to two hearts that never learned the same beat, yet somehow kept echoing each other across a lifetime. At times I felt frustrated with them, then strangely protective, as if their hesitations were my own.

Florentino’s early devotion struck me with its intensity. I remember feeling both touched and unsettled by his romantic persistence, especially as he carried that promise through years of loss, wandering, and countless distractions he tried to pass off as love. Fermina, on the other hand, felt grounded in a way that made me breathe easier. When she married Dr. Juvenal Urbino, I sensed her desire for order, and I understood it. Watching her build a life with him gave the story a steadiness that made Florentino’s vigil feel even more fragile.

The world around them is painted with detail that made me stop more than once. The riverboats, the humid afternoons, the sharp humor, and the slow decay of the city all formed a landscape that felt alive. I often found myself drifting with it, as if the setting itself held its own breed of longing. When Urbino died, I felt the shift in the air. Florentino stepped forward again, older but unchanged at his core, and I was surprised by how much emotion that moment stirred in me.

By the end, when the two finally choose each other, I felt a mix of relief and an odd melancholy. Their love did not arrive shining. It arrived worn, tested, and honest. Closing the book, I carried a quiet respect for the way love can wait, transform, and still reach for one more beginning, even when the world insists it is too late.

When I finished The Witches of Eastwick, I felt as if I had stepped out of a storm that kept changing shape. Updike’s novel follows three women in a small Rhode Island town who discover their own strange power after their marriages fall apart. As I moved through the story, I kept feeling a mix of amusement and unease. The magic in the book never felt light to me. It carried weight, and I sensed the loneliness sitting under each spell.

I followed Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie as they tested their strength, and I caught myself smiling at their confidence. At the same time, I noticed how their freedom unsettled the town around them. Updike captured the texture of boredom, desire, and small town gossip in a way that made me pause more than once. I felt the tension build when Darryl Van Horne arrived, a man who stirred all their ambitions and insecurities at once. Watching their world bend around him left me uneasy, as if I could see a crack forming long before they did.

The story carried a rhythm I found hard to shake. I felt sympathy for the women even when their choices turned sharp. Their magic became a mirror for the emotions they tried to outrun. When the novel closed, I was left with a faint sadness and a sense that freedom can feel heavy, especially when the world keeps trying to shrink it.

Reading The Wretched of the Earth wasn’t easy—it was urgent. Though written by Frantz Fanon, the preface by Jean-Paul Sartre hit me like a warning shot. From the first page, I knew this wasn’t a book meant for passive consumption. It demanded something from me.

Fanon writes about decolonization not as a metaphor or academic idea, but as a necessary, painful, and violent rupture. His voice is fierce, grounded in lived experience, and impossible to ignore. I felt both captivated and uncomfortable—especially as a reader coming from privilege. He speaks directly to the psychology of oppression, and how colonial violence doesn’t end when the flag is lowered.

What moved me most was the clarity with which he describes rage—not as chaos, but as a response to centuries of humiliation. His words made me see how dignity, when stripped for long enough, doesn’t ask politely to be returned.

This isn’t a text that consoles. It confronts. And in that confrontation, I felt something shift.

The Wretched of the Earth lit a fire I wasn’t expecting. It gave shape to injustices I thought I understood, and then showed me I didn’t. I finished it feeling shaken—but more awake. Some books challenge your thinking. This one dares you to change.