This memoir by Franzen, author of the literary hit The Corrections, provides an intimate and entertaining view of his boyhood as a nerdy nebbish growing up in the airless suburbs.

While not at the level of Corrections, it’s lovely on its own: funny and bravely unsparing of his idiosyncrasies, with flashes of his prose brilliance and cut-through-the-crap humor. To his credit, some of the episodes are far from fascinating but he breathes life into them through the quality of his writing.

The downside is the long section about his passion for bird watching, which in recent years he’s pursued obessively. The point seemed to be how hard he’s working to avoid his life – an honest admission, if I’m reading it right – but the result was pages and pages about bird watching. Pretty droll.

This memoir makes it clear where Corrections came from. He mined his own life heavily. My hunch tells me it would be hard for him to do that again in novel form. He’s used his prime material for his masterpiece. What does he do now?

Just speculation, but maybe that’s why he put out a memoir instead of another novel – which there’s certainly a demand for: Corrections was published back in 2001. (I wonder about that bird watching – maybe he really is trying to avoid something.)

Whatever the case, I’m ready for another Franzen novel. He is a fantastic writer.