Freedom by Jonathan Franzen is a literary fiction novel set in the US. I came across it many years ago on a cli-fi (climate fiction) reading list, and have been meaning to read it since.
Literary fiction has a strong fanbase, but I think it’s important to note that whilst I read lit-fic novels, it isn’t my go-to genre. I was inspired to read this novel purely for the climate change connection. Please note the following review contains spoilers.
About Freedom
The story follows the Berglund family, with Patty Berglund providing some of the ‘autobiographical’ chapters in the book. Walter and Patty meet in college, but she is attracted to Walter’s roommate. Despite this, Walter and Patty get married and have two children.
To say that they have a complicated relationship would be a bit of an understatement. Feelings of love, jealousy, and regret are found in this novel. Humour is occasionally present – more so in the first half of the book.
It felt like quite a bleak read to me; I counted no fewer than four affairs which make up a fair bit of the plot in this 597 page book. However, I should stress again that the writing was very much in line with what you’d expect from a lit-fic novel.
Thus, fans of literary fiction may enjoy this, as many of the reviews on the cover attest to. But if you’re purely looking for a cli-fi read, there are less lengthy and more upbeat novels out there.
Freedom and cli-fi
“You, too, can help denude every last scrap of native habitat in Asia, Africa, and South America! You, too, can buy six-foot-wide plasma TV screens that consume unbelievable amounts of energy, even when they’re not turned on! But that’s OK, because that’s why we threw you out of your homes in the first place, so we could strip-mine your ancestral hills and feed the coal-fired generators that are the number-one cause of global warming and other excellent things like acid rain. It’s a perfect world isn’t it? It’s a perfect system, because as long as you’ve got your six-foot-wide plasma TV, and the electricity to run it, you don’t have to think about any of the ugly consequences.”
Overpopulation is a core theme here, which also drives Walter’s work. Another theme is mountaintop removal (for coal), and the impacts that will have on both local ecology and the climate crisis.
The quote above comes from a speech that Walter gives during a time of deep uncertainty, pain, and introspection in his life. This being said, it felt like the number of climate change mentions were fairly small and buried in this long novel.
Summary
“World population and energy consumption are going to have to fall drastically at some point. We’re way past sustainable even now. Once the collapse comes, there’s going to be a window of opportunity for ecosystems to recover, but only if there’s any nature left.”
Freedom was published back in 2010, and since then the cli-fi cannon has grown enormously. I can see why this was talked about in cli-fi circles back then. And if you’re a fan of literary fiction, and wanted to explore cli-fi, perhaps this might be up your street. In some ways it reminded me of Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver from a cli-fi perspective, which was published shortly after Freedom, and had a similar slow burn and drawn out feel to it.
For those dipping their toes in cli-fi waters for the first time, I’d recommend a lighter and brighter read, such as Hannah Gold’s incredible novels. It remains my hope that stories will reach people in ways that science and experts have been unable to, and I believe this genre can help show us the potential future we could have and how to achieve it.
I’ve been writing about the climate emergency since 2016, and the AI crisis since 2023. I write all my own work, without the use of AI. I don’t publish on any other paid platforms, and my blog remains completely free to read. If you’ve found my writing informative and if you’d like to support my work, I’d be really grateful if you did so here. Thank you.
My cli-fi children’s picture book, Nanook and the Melting Arctic is available from Amazon, including Amazon UK and Amazon US. My eco-fiction children’s picture book, Hedgey-A and the Honey Bees about how pesticides affect bees, is available on Amazon’s global stores including Amazon UK and Amazon US.