The Twenty-Seventh City

One of the better novels I've read in a while was The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen. I read his very famous and highly acclaimed novel The Corrections earlier this year and enjoyed it, and picked up The Twenty-Seventh City this summer due partly to it being about St. Louis, where my parents live. Franzen grew up in St. Louis and his knowledge of the city is clear, and adds a certain depth to his descriptions.

The novel is widely sweeping and has a vast scope. It can be a little overwhelming at times, and periodically Franzen delves a little far into city politics and gets a little tedious, similar to his chapters set in the Baltics in The Corrections. However, I was interested throughout the book and found it to linger with me for a few days after completing it. I'm still thinking about it, and tying up loose ends in my head. It reads a little bit like a mystery, a genre I tend to stay away from. The Corrections is really, in my mind, a study of several characters, while The Twenty-Seventh City is a study of two characters set in a sweeping city story. I recommend it, especially if one is familiar with St. Louis, interested in municipal politics, or the mid-1980s, where the book is set.