The Best Books of the 21st Century: Taffy Brodesser-Akner on ‘The Corrections’

If you were a reading adult in the early 2000s, you probably tackled, or at least heard about, “The Corrections,” Jonathan Franzen’s best-selling and much discussed book.

The novel won the National Book Award, was a Pulitzer finalist, and an Oprah Book Club pick.

The book arrives at its 25th anniversary this month, and in today’s episode of the “Book Review” podcast, host Gilbert Cruz talks with Taffy Brodesser-Akner, a writer for The New York Times magazine and novelist, about why this novel is so essential to modern American literature. And that’s not just her take: “The Corrections” ranks fifth on our list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, as voted on by hundreds of influential readers.

“The Corrections” is a book about America at the turn of the century; it was published just before 9/11. Brodesser-Akner, who admits to having read the novel 20 times, says that Franzen’s work “became the defining book of America’s golden moment, which ended on Sept. 10.”