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Believe the hype – Jonathan Franzen has written a great American novel

At 50 years old and four novels into his writing career, the American press has crowned Jonathan Franzen a literary giant. His unusual mix of popularity and literary gravitas means that Franzen’s new novel, Freedom – another sprawling tale of everyday American angst that marries the domestic and the global – has been eagerly anticipated. The book has been ecstatically reviewed – twice – in the New York Times, and compared to the work of Tolstoy and Dickens. President Obama even packed an advance copy with his swimming trunks as holiday reading. But is it really that good? Or is elitist Franzen simply the poster boy for a literary culture that ignores female writers in favour of white men from New York?