Four Freedoms

This is the first novel I have read by John Crowley and I will surely read more. This story quickly pulls in the reader and brings to life what it must have been like during WW II on the homefront. In addition, he creates a hero who remains believably optimistic and positive about life despite horrible early life experiences leaving the reader feeling inspired and touched. Wondeful read.

FOUR FREEDOMS is brilliant. crowley writes like a dream; the novel is about the human capacity to overcome the most degrading and terrible blows, to find the best in each other, to transform suffering into grace. it's funny and sexy and true and beautiful; by the end i was so choked up my throat hurt. (the end reminds me a little of 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE). maybe it is his best novel, but it's so unlike, say, LITTLE, BIG, or BEASTS, that i don't see a way to compare them. certainly it's his most accessible novel, and i hope anybody reading it goes on to the other wonderful books in this resourceful and gifted writer's list because he is simply an american treasure. thanks, john. i needed that.

I will write a proper review of this fine book later, but just in case anyone at the publisher's reads these reviews, you should be aware that there are some typos and one somewhat memorable continuity error in this otherwise completely engaging novel (hardcover version). Toward the end I wondered how Connie could be in two places at once! She shows up on a photograph when she shouldn't, when time and weather do not permit her to be there. The typos show up throughout, maybe a dozen or so. I didn't really mind any of this, except insofar as these things drew my attention and broke the spell of the book. That said, I loved this book, the soulful rendering of the characters, the attention to historical details, and the care taken to blend the never-happened seamlessly into the real. Plus, Mr. Crowley simply has an amazing gift for words and for presenting to souls of his characters in such a way that you can recognize yourself in their moments, their turning points. He goes deeper than any other writer I know, and when you get that deep, we are all the same. This book dropped me into a world I would never have thought to visit, and I loved it for the world and for the people in it.

Crowley has put together a fictional microcosm of Brokaw's "Greatest Generation". We follow the lives of some folks as they served at home through the years of World War II. Crowley put together a cast that includes those who aren't heroic or particularly noteworthy - but are way too real. These are the people of cities and small towns who, for whatever reasons, served to the best of their abilities. My father served during WWII in the Army Air Corps and my mother made aircraft parts. The stories Crowley tells are the same as those I grew up hearing. It was a time when people came together to do what needed done. I wonder if my children's generation will get as much from this book as I did. Unless they really listened to the "war stories" they heard their grandparents tell, I doubt this will be more than just another WWII era book to them. Hopefully, they'll read this and learn. The product description tells, in my opinion, way too much. If you have not read John Crowley before, this is a great place to start. He demonstrates an ability to make words flow smoothly and a tell a story without gimmicks. If you have read Crowley, why are you reading my review? You know you're going to read it. I would love to know what happened later in the characters' lives; but I also wonder if a sequel is a good idea. If Crowley writes it, though, I promise I'll read it!

Place "Little, Big" away on some high shelf of literary magic; perhaps put "Aegypt" there as well. Then dash for a copy of Crowley's "Four Freedoms" ... and let him bury you in a history (his own) of WWII, and the real lives (his own creations) of characters who lived, worked and grew and changed in a bomber-building community in an almost-real Oklahoma. This is Crowley's finest novel. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech of 1941 with its: 1. Freedom of speech and expression 2. Freedom of religion 3. Freedom from want 4. Freedom from fear ... may underlie the targets towards which Crowley's characters reach, but the personal problems that each of the so-sharply described women bring to the story -- and the crippled Prosper Olander, in braces like Roosevelt, who loves and befriends each in his own innocent way -- will grab the reader with the intimacies of their stories and how they live in the confines that the War forces on them -- while Prosper must deal with the stringencies of being "crippled" during that time of no ADA, but free to share the beds, the perplexities, the successes of these women-in-wartime with whom it is so easy to relate. Crowley has always been able to create women characters at their fullest. That is especially true in this novel, and it is a special treat that he is able also to feature Prosper, this man with useless legs, who does not dilly dally like Pierce in the Aegypt series (who is never certain what he is doing) but almost through the magic of his braces slips into the most detailed sexual relations (that Crowley has ever written) with the women characters, into their confidences, and the lives of Crowley's other fully realized characters, and help move them on through the demands of the War and their personal dilemmas. A novel too rich to dissect, superbly written, Crowley does not completely abandon the "magic" in which he has generally infused his novels. In this case, there is a more general, if subtle, infusion of American popular culture into the story, especially images of iconic figures from the comics, that serves to help relate and enlarge events and characters into the real world of 1941 that many of us knew ... and that ultimately forces the reader, with reluctance to give up the story, towards those words that must close any tale, movie, fascination. Such richness. Such satisfaction. This is a wonderful novel.