After reading more than half of Freedom, I went searching for reviews and criticisms, looking for something that expressed what I thought I thought. Sadly, there was no review or description that captured how I felt about this book, so I have decided to write a review myself. Here it goes:
Freedom wasn’t a terrible novel, but it wasn’t that great either. There was one major flaw with the entire story, and a smaller but important issue that brought the overall rating of the book down. The book doesn’t know what it wants to be, and the author even admits .
Let me clarify. The book is big, not unacceptably big, but it’s big. Everything, naturally, is connected, but there’s no real direction to it. There’s no real direction to the narrative. The book is a very detailed drama, primarily revolved around Patty and her life. The book goes on and on about her experiences, certainly linking everything to each other. What it fails at is having a point.
It’s almost like a drama without a narrative, merely explaining, monotonously at times, what happens. There’s no overt or, even, arguably, nuanced point to this presentation. It’s just being presented. It’s just there.
Originally, as the author explains in an interview, this book was actually a collection of stories; he combined them all to create what we now know as Freedom. It does show. Because it drags on… and on… and on. And there’s no real reason or point for why it should be dragged on.
Throughout the entire story there’s various situational dilemmas for the characters, whether it be environmental problems, sexual disloyalty, rebellion against parents, so on and so forth. There’s a lot of them in this book, and there’s merely, again, a presentation of the issues. On occasion, you’ll get the author commenting on a particular issue, but that’s not typical. It seems the author just had a bunch of issues on his mind, put them in his book, but without any rhyme or reason. It comes off as directionless.
Which, I would summarize, is the main issue: this book is aimless. It is a collection of things. Many things. For no purpose, for no end. Merely to be displayed, merely to be read.
There’s nothing wrong with that, it just what separates the book from greatness.
