A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
The Discomfort Zone is Jonathan Franzen''s tale of growing up, squirming in his own über-sensitive skin, from a "small and fundamentally ridiculous person," into an adult with strong inconvenient passions. Whether he''s writing about the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka''s fiction on his protracted quest to lose his virginity, or the web of connections between bird watching, his all-consuming marriage, and the problem of global warming, Franzen is always feelingly engaged with the world we live in now. The Discomfort Zone is a wise, funny, and gorgeously written self-portrait by one of America''s finest writers.