Crossroads, his splendid sixth novel, comes billed as the first part of a proposed trilogy, A Key to All Mythologies, named after Edward Casaubon’s absurd, unfinished tract in Middlemarch. New Prospect is in a state of flux but Jonathan Franzen remains reliably, defiantly Franzen-esque, tending to his faltering flock in fair weather or foul, and whatever the ructions in the country at large. This might be God or family or a fresh myth to believe in, a 20th-century pursuit-of-happiness tale, self-authored if need be. Inside the First Reformed church, the worshippers are attempting to ride out the storm, casting about for something rock solid and true. T he times are a-changing in solid, respectable New Prospect, Illinois, where Christmas 1971 arrives in a whirl of sex, drugs and folk music, while the Vietnam war grinds on off stage.
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