The Corrections

Surely no good can come from Enid Lambert’s desperate attempts to bring her family together for “one last Christmas”? Her three children are variously depressed; depressed and recently fired; and depressed, recently fired and now working for a “warlord” in Lithuania. None of them wants to go home. Not least because their father has spent his life abusing and bullying them and is now deep into decline and dementia. But Jonathan Franzen makes us long for a happy Christmas resolution. He allows these people love, and that makes the messed-up emotions all the more exquisite and painful. Sam Jordison