I actually read The Commitments, flags, you should too. It was a good read. Later, I read Franzen's novel about fracking, and taking the tops off mountains, and marital breakdown (what isn't about marital breakdown?): Freedom -- yes, both books are impossibly long, but you sort of miss them when they're over. And the sentences... and the experience of living the lives of the protagonists - he does that well. --- This review casts aspersion on the notion of writing a book about a parent dying, saying The picaresque adventures of a feckless male academic, borrowed from DeLillo; The sentimental tale of the decay and death of one’s parents as in Dave Eggers’s “masterpiece”; The old, old plot device of the family Christmas reunion to bring the centrifugal parents and kids back together again against all odds I've noticed this: Parents die. They die in real life, and they die in novels. --- Remember Microserfs? For all its high tech, startuptitude, in the end it's about parents dying. --- Remember Bright Lights Big City, Jay McInerney's first novel. For all its life in New York City survivitude, in the end it's about parents dying. --- Remember the Bible: well guess what? Parents die.. --- Full disclosure: I couldn't read the whole review by Dolan. To say that a novel about parents dying is a hackneyed storyline is saying that Hamlet has a hackneyed storyline because the son is trying to deal with the death of his father. Bosh.The overwriting is meant to conceal the fact that this novel is a simple mix of three of the most hackneyed storylines in American fiction: