The Real Housewives of Jonathan Franzen

Shortly before confessing the details of her turbulent past to her therapist, Marion Hildebrandt, the matron of the family around which Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads revolves, spends precious minutes of her session in silence. She wants, for once, “to be the person who was withholding, not the wife and mother being withheld from.” Marion is a woman full of secrets, safeguarded during more than 20 years of lukewarm marriage with four children. She is a big character with an inexhaustibly deep emotional well and small sensibilities. In other words, she is a housewife.