Word: enid
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...Corrections a complex and sophisticated work, but Franzen’s skill is such the novel is a charming and touching reading experience as well. The Corrections has a remarkable view of the world, and this is made apparent through our encounters with the Lambert family. We first meet Enid and Alfred performing the slow and futile rituals of married life after retirement. Alfred, reticent and principled, is waging a stubborn battle against Parkinson’s disease. His struggle frustrates Enid, a Midwestern mother of three grown children striving to maintain a fantasy of proud normalcy and prosperity...
This carefully structured novel slowly builds up to that most wonderful of American family events, Christmas at home. Enid is determined to have one last Christmas at the family home, one that will make up for any and all of the imperfections that plague their lives. Before we get to Christmas, however, Franzen is busy sketching out the big picture details of American life through the Lamberts’ various misadventures. If a life is lived in the details, then Franzen’s grasp of the Lamberts’ inner and superficial lives is fabulous. He gives us striking...
...inner lives and dismal family dynamic of the Lamberts, a couple of whom were minor characters in the book he abandoned. Alfred, a retired railway-bridge engineer and basement-lab inventor, is a man sliding into the mental and physical chaos of Parkinson's disease. His wife Enid devotes much of her energy to denying the seriousness of his condition, but understands it well enough to want all three of their grown children home for a last family Christmas in St. Jude, a Midwestern city with resemblances to St. Louis, where Franzen, now 42, grew...
...social disorders of the 21st century are expressed mostly through the personal distempers of the three siblings and their flight to the false consolations of sex, careerism and consumerism. "They all lose something in leaving behind their parents' values," says Franzen. "You wouldn't want a marriage like Enid and Alfred's, but when you correct things you get new problems...
Zwigoff gave Clowes complete control over the onscreen characters. And he agreed with the writer's belief that the girls should be played by actresses no older than 18. In the project's anguished gestation, Christina Ricci, the original star, grew too old for Enid. Enter Birch, fresh from her role as the daughter in American Beauty, and Johansson, who has been playing wise children for almost half her life (Manny & Lo, The Horse Whisperer). "Enid is an original," says Birch, now 19. "Timeless." So is the actress's incarnation. She gives Enid the stooped posture and scowl...