From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections , a darkly comedic novel about family

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paulthe gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter’s dreams. Together with Walterenvironmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family manshe was doing her small part to build a better world.

But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katzoutré rocker and Walter’s college best friend and rivalstill doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become a very different kind of neighbor,” an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street’s attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections , Jonathan Franzen has given us an ...