Purity by Jonathan Franzen review – dazzling, hilarious and problematic

Franzen’s first novel in five years demonstrates again that he is an exceptional writer – but one whose portrayal of women lacks nuance

When I reached page 207 of my advance copy of Purity, I did something I’ve never before done as a reviewer, something that quite possibly was a breach of professional protocol but seemed so inevitable as to have been scripted by Jonathan Franzen himself: I used my iPhone to take a picture of a particular paragraph and tweeted it. The paragraph quotes a middle-aged writer and professor named Charles discussing contemporary publishing with a young woman named Pip:

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