Lacking both heart and energy, it's unclear Franzen wanted to write this book. Instead of a narrative ambitious either internally or externally, this instead seems a collection of half-baked mini-obsessions, none of which sustain the author. The characters are half-formed, especially the women, who, from Franzen's telling, operate entirely on wishing to either have sex with older men or their regret for being too old to have babies. For literary pop fiction, this book lacks both pop intrigue and literary accomplishment.