It turns out that our Wolf has no interest whatsoever in politics, in truth or transparency and is only in the leak business for the fame. In The Corrections, Franzen has written about the easy transformation of communism into neoliberalism with some ironic humor, but there is not much of that here. I kept listening only because I had no other choice and I was slightly interested in finding out what Franzen was trying to do with the Andreas Wolf character, who begins his career exposing Stazi secrets after the fall of the Berlin wall. In the end, Purity, nicknamed Pip with a nod to Dickens, finds true love, forgives her parents and starts a new life with a true love and lots of wealth.

Confronting hard economic times and suffering through dead-end jobs, she finally stumbles upon her father and discovers that she is an heiress. Worse yet, the plot is straight about of a women’s drug store novel: Purity’s love relationships fail as she seeks a father figure, having grown up without one. The characters are pure self-interest without any self-reflection. People complain, worry about their self-image, elaborate the details of “he said, she said” and, instead of having interests in the world, all the characters try to control and manage how other people feel about them. The remaining 526 pages were concerned with relationship negotiations between men and women, children and parents. Jenna Lamia narrates the part of the twenty-something title character, with, appropriately for the writing style, that special millennial lilt that seems to run out of energy at the end of every sentence.

Although the first fifty pages or so had some wit and interesting characters, such as Andreas Wolf, a Julian Assange persona, Purity soon devolved into stylistically bland chicklit. I listened to the audiobook of Purity (FSG, 576 pages) as I was held captive on a thirty-five hour road trip.

Purity jonathan franzen review