4.5 out of 10. While I really wanted to like it, I couldn't get over the sense that Franzen was obsessed with the mommy/son, daddy/daughter sexual relationship, and it felt icky that it came up again and again in every POV for every character throughout the novel. Also, Franzen seems to have some disparaging views about the feminist movement and was hell-bent in representing it in the worst light possible in the novel. Shuddering at the thought of his relationship with his mother—something about /Purity/ makes me think he wants to sleep with her or kill her. In all, MOMMY ISSUES ABOUND.

Also, the Bolivia setting was a total lost chance in investigating socialism. Franzen missed the opportunity to dig his fingers into Bolivia the same way he did with East Germany or California. Write what you know, I guess... but the never-ending discourse between socialism/capitalism/East/West could have been dealt with with a bit more complexity if he had, I don't know, spared a few paragraphs more about Bolivian socialism and Bolivian society as a whole. Why set your novel in a foreign country if the only two Bolivian characters (Pedro and Teresa--dubiously Bolivian names, imo) are simply there to serve the foreigners and the larger setting could be anywhere at all.