Purity - Jonathan Franzen

Franzen is always a good storyteller, but this is the least appealing of his books that I have read. I just found it hard to care. The one character who is likeable, the eponymous Purity, nicknamed Pip, has to disappear for lengthy periods to make way for other stories that will eventually dovetail into her own at the end.
 
There’s some political context to the narrative but it feels like convenient padding rather than anything Franzen is passionate about. Most of the book is taken up with the characters’ feelings and hang-ups and I guess that’s what some readers look for in this kind of unchallenging novel. The emotional wrangling ties in with the plot, enough for it to be justified, but I tire of the lives of the well-off who don’t really have much to complain about and yet still do.