posted on 04 Oct 2015

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

I have to admit it - I failed. 200 and something pages into this 560 slab I just had to give up. Part of me says that life is far too short and there are far too many other books to spend my time hacking through something I just couldn't tune into. At another level however, I can't help but see this as a defeat - even a failing by me as a reader. Why would I think that? Well, I loved Franzen's breakthrough book - The Corrections - and his essays are just great. I will always seek out his reviews and opinion pieces. When I saw he was doing a tour of the literary festivals I was delighted to get a ticket because seeing these big, big names coming over from the States is bound to be a rare thing - at my age I might not get too many other chances to catch him speaking about his work.

And he's undoubtedly an intriguing character - I'm tempted to write charming but I know that's a very subjective opinion. He has an easy charm and wit and his louche demeanour has the tang of time spent chatting and debating in the New York intellectual circles (if such things really exist outside of my imagination). So I really wanted to like Purity. Instead I found a book that felt plodding and stodgy with characters I just couldn't believe. You are however, unmistakably, in the hands of someone who really knows how to write and some passages are very good indeed - especially his dialogue which crackles off the page. But this doesn't compensate for the feeling of running hard across a surface that keeps wanting to drag you into the mire.

The book starts with an introduction to Pip (real name Purity) who has problems - the relationship between her and her mother is terrible and she is riddled with guilt over this. Pinning down her identity is a constant issue for Pip and she is clearly seeking something new - she certainly hates her job and most of the people she works with. She finds herself being rather mysteriously courted by a charismatic German, Andreas Wolf, running a data-release/freedom of information project in South America which is not dissimilar to Wiki-Leaks but definitively isn't Wiki-Leaks. She is, we discover, likely to succumb to his blandishments to join the project.

At the end of Pip's opening section we switch to a very lengthy and deatiled retelling of Andreas's back story as a child and young person in the old East Germany, where he is the son of parents who have influence in the Stasi. Wolf, it transpires, had a colourful time including an addiction to masturbation and a desire to kill that he follows through on - ostensibly to rid a girl friend of her abusive step-father..

Pip's story was irritating but the Andreas story is oddly both dull and implausible at the same time. I really thought I'd never get to the end of this section and by the time I had, I was almost decided that I'd had enough. I did start into the next section but by this point I'd run out of good will. The book was  like a very rich confection - all the constituent parts should make a delightful sweetmeat but in reality the way the mix has been prepared what you end up with is something so dense and indigestable you just can't finish it.

Terry Potter

October 2015