Strong Motion: A Novel

by Jonathan Franzen

Overview

From the author of Crossroads and The Corrections

New York Times Bestselling Author
National Book Award Winner

“Jonathan Franzen, an abundantly gifted writer, has even more nerve than talent” (The New York Times), and he refuses to play it safe in this bold, layered ecological thriller.

Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of strange happenings—earthquakes strike the city, and the first one kills his grandmother. During a bitter feud over the inheritance, Louis falls in love with a young seismologist, Renée Seitchek, whose theory about the origin of the earthquakes turns his world upside down.

“No doubt about it: Jonathan Franzen . . . is one of the most extraordinary writers around.” —Newsweek

“Strong Motion seems for a while like a brilliant chaos. Bit by bit, the chaos settles . . . the brilliant things remain, and the connections among them begin to appear.” —Los Angeles Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250823984
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	10/12/2021
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	439,383
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Franzen is the author of five novels, including The Corrections, Freedom, and Crossroads, and five works of nonfiction, most recently Farther Away and The End of the End of the Earth, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

1959

Place of Birth:

Western Springs, Illinois

Education:

B.A., Swarthmore College, 1981; studied as a Fulbright scholar at Freie Universität in Berlin

Website:

http://www.jonathanfranzen.com

Editorial Reviews

Bold, layered . . . Mr. Franzen lavishes vigorous, expansive prose not only on the big moments of sexual and emotional upheaval, but also on various sideshows and subthemes . . . An affirmation of Franzen's fierce imagination and distinctive seriocomic voice . . . his will be a career to watch.” —Josh Rubins, The New York Times Book Review

“Ingenious . . . Strong Motion is more than a novel with a compelling plot and a genuine romance (complete with highly charged love scenes); Franzen also writes a fluid prose that registers the observations of his wickedly sharp eye.” —Douglas Seibold, The Chicago Tribune

“Complicated and absorbing with a fair mix of intrigue, social commentary and humor laced with a tinge of malice.” —Anne Gowen, The Washington Times

“Strong Motion is a roller coaster thriller . . . Franzen captures with unnerving exactness what it feels like to be young, disaffected and outside mainstream America. There is an uncannily perceptive emotional truth to this book, and it strikes with the flinty anger of an early-sixties protest song.” —Will Dana, Mirabella

“Franzen is one of the most extraordinary writers around . . . Strong Motion shows all the brilliance of The Twenty-Seventh City.” —Laura Shapiro, Newsweek

“Lyrical, dramatic and, above all, fearless . . . Reading Strong Motion, one is not in the hands of a writer as a fine jeweler or a simple storyteller. Rather, we're in the presence of a great American moralist in the tradition of Dreiser, Twain or Sinclair Lewis.” —Ephraim Paul, Philadelphia Inquirer

“With this work, Franzen confidently assumes a position as one of the brightest lights of American letters . . . Part thriller, part comedy of manners, Strong Motion is full of suspense.” —Alicia Metcalf Miller, Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Wry, meticulously realistic, and good.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Franzen's dark vision of an ailing society has the same power as Don DeLillo's, but less of the numbing pessimism.” —Details

“Base and startling as a right to the jaw . . . [Franzen] is a writer of almost frightening talent and promise.” —Margaria Fichtner, Miami Herald

From the Publisher

Debates over women's reproductive rights and environmental disasters rattle the lives of young lovers in Boston in Franzen's ( The Twenty-Seventh City ) second intellectual thriller. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

An earthquake that 23-year-old Louis Holland doesn't even feel shakes the Boston area and sets in motion a chain of events in this multilayered, metaphor-studded novel with a love story at its core. After Louis's step-grandmother is the quake's only fatality, his mother inherits millions in stock of chemical company Sweeting-Aldren, and Louis meets seismologist Renee Seitchek, who shares her bed and her theory with him. When tremors continue in the Northeast, scientists study fault lines, a fundamentalist anti-abortion minister credits God's wrath, and Renee suggests ``induced seismicity'' from Sweeting-Aldren's longtime secret pumping of industrial wastes into a deep well. Franzen ( The Twenty-Seventh City , LJ 11/1/88) may push an occasional metaphor too far, but distractions fade in the face of fine characterizations in a context of science grounded in history with well-integrated social messages and a subtext of the Boston Red Sox breaking fans' hearts. Impressive.-- Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.

Library Journal