The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen HarperCollins

*Originally reviewed for Edwards Magazine Book Club
http://www.edwardsmagazine.ca/book_club_non-fiction_discomfort.zone.html

The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen is a memoir. Of sorts. In it, Jonathan waxes poetic about his life growing up as a somewhat awkward, nerdy youth and a slightly disillusioned adult. Now, most memoirs that I have read have a theme; drunken parent, abuse, wild youth, mental illness etc. Not the Discomfort Zone. While I found in enjoyable enough, it was basically the ramblings of a person who, to me, had a pretty normal childhood. And while this doesn’t make it a bad memoir, I was left wondering why?
The author starts off in the present at his childhood house, then he goes into the past, then a bit closer to the present then more in the past. Throughout the book we are jumping back and forth through the author’s life. For me, it was a bit confusing. He talks for awhile about his college years. Then we are in his German class. But is it high school German or college German? And maybe it doesn’t matter. But for my mind and my enjoyment, I really needed to know. And he never uses first names for any of the people who are in his life except for his immediate family. Everyone is referred to by their last names, which I have to say I found very annoying. One woman he is in a long term relationship with is only ever referred to as “the Californian”. It is almost as if they were not important enough to warrant remembering or using their first names and to me this was a bit obnoxious.
I think that maybe I just didn’t “get” this book. While I did somewhat enjoy his style of writing and most of the memories I really didn’t understand the point of the book. But maybe I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe that’s the point.