If you thought that Angry Young Men were by now just a slice of
literary history, Jonathan Franzen's novel, published for the first
time in Britain, will bring you sharply up to date. In Strong
Motion, the young Louis Holland is very angry indeed: mad at his
mom, his sister, his job and his entire life - and getting involved
as well in the possible causes of some inexplicable earthquakes on
the east coast of the US centred around Boston. As a book, Strong
Motion fights on a dangerously broad front, being at the same time
an eco-thriller about pollution, with a linked and often highly
technical seismological side-plot and, best of all, an acutely
perceptive and bleakly funny tale about the horrid dysfunctional
families with which its hero is involved. The latter narrative is
by far the strongest part of the book: sometimes it has the
authentic voice of the late, great Peter de Vries, or of the
confused and cynical youth who was the narrator in J D Salinger's
Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenter. It is difficult to extrapolate
gags or even snippets from Franzen's stylish prose, for this is the
type of author who gives himself plenty of space, while upon the
other hand his hero Louis is a young man of very few words indeed.
Franzen's imagination is boundless, but he does have a problem
restraining it sometimes, which involves dragging the storyline off
the rails into countless little disappointing sidings that lead
nowhere. But the book is packed with thrills and high-class laconic
fun - and although there are longueurs along the way, Strong Motion
is sufficiently action-packed to hold the attention on a series of
wet afternoons or a bumpy flight - and its surprising finale is
guaranteed to satisfy the most demanding reader. (Kirkus UK)
Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of strange happenings – earthquakes strike the city, and the first one kills his grandmother. During a bitter feud over the inheritance Louis falls in love with Renée Seitchek, a passionate and brilliant seismologist, whose discoveries about the origin of the earthquakes complicate everything.
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