The Answer is Always Yes/Freedom

The Answer is Always Yes - Monica Ferrell (2008)
Monica Ferrell's debut novel, The Answer is Always Yes, is a coming of age story revolving around New York City, drugs and an 18 year-old dude's desire to be cool. Unsurprisingly, this all adds up to a tragic ending that in some ways shocks but mostly is underwhelming. The main character was a complete loser in high school. He was interested in philosophy and classical music amongst other nerdy mediums, his single mother is completely overbearing and uncultured, and he was basically socially inept. Through obsessively studying New York City weeklies before moving onto the campus of NYU, he desperately tries to turn things around and become the coolest kid on campus. Eventually he acquires an intelligent, dramatic girlfriend, a fake ID, and later, a gig as a promoter at one of the hottest night clubs in the city. He gets wrapped up in the Ecstasy scene in the mid-90s, and I'm sure you can guess where it goes from there. Ferrell does a good job with the details of an annoyingly unbelievable plot. The inclusion of footnotes from a fictional outside source (which, I never really understood the real purpose of) was an interesting touch, but also completely unnecessary. Ferrell's writing style seems purposely high-brow and quirky, thus quite pretentious and utterly irritating. The characters were strong, and like I mentioned, there were some interesting ideas, but the frustrating aspects of The Answer is Always Yes certainly outweighed the good.


Freedom - Jonathan Franzen (2010)
I'm not surprised one bit by how much I loved Jonathan Franzen's latest novel, that which will probably be considered his crowning moment, Freedom. While it will always be his mastery of both the simplicity and complexity of the english language that will keep me reading and rereading Franzen throughout my adult life, I can't deny how much I loved Freedom for how insanely fucked up it is. I won't give away the juicey details, but these characters (or at least 90% of each of them), are deranged and terrible people, who were so much fun, albeit difficult, to read about and invest in, even if I was rooting against each of them for the majority of the book. However, these characters end up displaying redeeming qualities that express a wonderful, realistic hope that was lacking in Franzen's other incredible novel that I read earlier in 2001, The Corrections. This was surprisingly refreshing after all of the awesomely disturbing events (if you thought The Corrections was depressing, you're in for a real treat here) that lead up to this gorgeous conclusion. And, I don't even usually like happy endings! With Freedom, Franzen delivers another knock-out punch, and it definitely deserves all the hype it has received.