Strong Motion by Jonathan Franzen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my fourth novel by Jonathan Franzen: I read Strong Motion after the outstanding The Corrections, published in 2001, and the very good Purity (2015) and Freedom (2010) (I reviewed them all on Goodreads). Despite it being written much earlier (published in 1992), it is undeniably a Franzen novel, with its fluent, erudite, sometimes excessive prose and with the characteristic "information overload," as if the author were trying to capture—on each page—the world in all its complexity.

In seismology, the term "strong motion" is defined as strong shaking that occurs in the direct vicinity of the fault that has caused the earthquake. Two of the main threads of the novel refer to this definition: a series of minor earthquakes occurs in New England, and the seismologists are trying to pinpoint the causes. The earthquake contributes to the death of a wealthy grandmother, and the struggle over a substantial inheritance causes metaphorical strong shaking of relationships in an already dysfunctional family.

There are several other threads in the plot: issues of environmental damage caused by dumping industrial waste, a story of a pro-life fundamentalist religious commune, and, naturally, a love story that connects the two protagonists. The threads merge as the novel progresses, and all loose ends are neatly tied up in a dramatic yet narratively elegant resolution.

I struggled with the star rating, but I decided to round it up to four stars, even if I like the book a little less than Purity and Freedom. On one hand, it feels more captivating (and easier to read) than the two later novels; on the other, I have doubts as to the plausibility of some characters' behaviors and several lengthy conversations, which may seem as if they were addressed to the reader.

Being a sort of computer scientist, I was amused by the author's inclusion of a computer program that helps a 1990s male to plan his daily activities. The code is followed by a two-page rumination on artificial intelligence, which does not feel excessively outdated even if it is a third of a century old.


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