Well, this is my first Franzen novel and will probably be my last. I think he's basically a lazy writer. Things began relatively well in the first part with the character, Purity. She's the only character that is of any interest really but he dumps her and brings her back for a bit in the middle and at the end to wrap things up in a fairy story way. She has miraculously changed but he was too lazy to develop that. Mostly we're stuck with over the top uninteresting characters and a bit of ham handed social commentary on the Internet, the current state of journalism, feminism...blah, blah, blah. He is fairly good at creating suspense to keep you reading but so are a lot of writers and the reader doesn't have to wade through a lot of self indulgent tripe.
I'm willing to admit this review might be a bit unfair. Blame it on reading this after "All the Light You Cannot See" where every word was a gem. The author did spend 10 years writing it. I think Franzen spewed this novel out pretty quickly.
