One of the worst books I have ever read.

It was pretentious, agonizing, and completely worthless.

The characters were extremely boring, in my opinion.

What was it about? It was some uninteresting combination of St Louis, Indian nationals, immigration, and terrorism.

It was a metaphorical story about metaphors, and seemed more like Jonathan Franzen's love for his own vocabulary or his thesaurus.

I actually hated it so much that I was angry at myself for finishing it. It was like the Bataan Death March of books.

If I ever read another Jonathan Franzen book, it will mean I've been body-snatched.

I can't believe I wasted my time on this. It was truly a terrible reading experience.

A really compelling, complex psychological novel awaits the reader.

The story delves into the aftermath of a new police chief's rise to power. She employs psychological torture on a prominent member of the community with the intention of "breaking" him to gain his support.

It's an intense character study that, for the most part, achieves its aims. The narrative is depressing, heart-wrenching, and truly captivating.

However, substance-wise, it feels a bit too thin to warrant a 500-page length. Nevertheless, it's a well-written and well-told story. The focus on a few characters pays off, but perhaps a smaller cast would be even better. There's a fair amount of redundancy that doesn't add much. Maybe upon a re-read, the purpose of some of that might become clearer.

The contrast between the main characters (Jammu, Singh, the Probsts, Norris) and the others like Devi and Rolf is quite stark. The latter really don't contribute much, while the former are the subjects of a well-told, lean story. It's noticeable that there's a segment of the book that seems to do little or amount to nothing. But when this book is good, it's really excellent! It can even be thrilling at times, albeit always in a quiet and subdued way.

I got 200 pages into this one and am reluctantly pulling the rip cord.

I find myself completely confused as to what is going on. The story is supposed to be about a midwestern city that hires a "young charismatic" woman from India as their new police chief. This initially sounded really interesting to me.

However, as I read on, I was extremely disappointed at the direction the author took with the character development. The chief is written as a completely corrupt and soulless human being. What's more, she seems to be running a brothel where the prostitutes are drugged. Ummm....wha???

Despite my misgivings, I remained resolute and persisted on. But then I took a peek at the reviews for this book. And boy, did that bring it all to a screeching halt. All of my doubts were echoed by others. The few reviews that ended up somewhat positive said things like "it took me 5 months to muscle through this one." Another reader noted that all the brown people in this book are written as evil. I couldn't agree more!

Maybe I will come back to it if quarantine desperation rages on long enough. Or maybe I'm just too lowbrow for this highbrow piece of art. But either way, it's just not my flavor.

I think I'll be looking for something else to read that better suits my tastes.

The original article is not provided, so I can't rewrite and expand it specifically. However, I can give you a general example of how to expand an article.

Let's say the original article is: "The dog is running in the park."

Expanded version:

The energetic dog is joyfully running in the beautiful park. The sun is shining brightly, and the grass is green and lush. The dog's tail is wagging happily as it chases after a butterfly. People are strolling around, enjoying the nice weather. Some are sitting on benches, reading books or chatting with friends. The dog seems to be having a great time, exploring the park and having fun.

You can provide the original article, and I will rewrite and expand it according to your requirements.

Barbara Probst was brutally killed twelve years ago.

Just two days after the fatal shooting, the St. Louis Coroner's Department shockingly closed the case, ruling her death as accidental homicide.

The police officer who fired the gun that took her life was given a week of paid leave, and within the year, by his own initiative, transferred to Des Moines.

According to all official accounts, the death of Barbara Probst was simply a tragic accident, nothing more.

However, the facts, at least, are clear. Barbara Probst, the wife of noted developer Martin Probst, was a passenger in a car driven by Brian "Fangs" Deere and Bobby Dean Judd, two small-time narcotics dealers.

The car was being driven at excessive speeds. Witnesses say that, moments before the shot was fired, Probst appeared to be attempting to exit the speeding car.

When she finally did leap from the vehicle, it was directly into the path of a bullet fired by Officer RC Haynes of the St. Louis Police Department.

These facts are not in dispute. But there remain several lingering questions about the incident that have never quite been put to rest.

What was she doing in the car with the two known felons? Why was she in East St. Louis on that day, when her estranged husband had said she was supposed to be in New York City?

Was it a mere coincidence that Barbara Probst was killed by an officer of the SLPD at the same time that her husband was having an affair with its chief?

If not, why did Chief S. Jammu commit suicide the following day?

One man, at least, believes he has the answers. Sam Norris, another prominent local citizen and an ex-military man with connections in the private investigation business.

Because he had been suspicious of Chief Jammu for several months, and due to his personal interest in the welfare of his friend Martin Probst, Mr. Norris had been conducting an investigation into Jammu and her associates.

Norris claims that the investigators overlooked one crucial player in the case: the mysterious Mr. Nissing.

"Nissing is the missing link," Norris said in a recent interview. "On the night Barbara was shot, I had a private detective on a stakeout at Nissing's property in East St. Louis.

Thanks to him, we discovered Barbara was living with Nissing in his East St. Louis apartment ever since leaving her husband. I've got copies of the cell phone provider's routing for that phone.

All of the calls to her husband from New York were initiated in that cell of East St. Louis where the Nissing apartment was located."

Norris speaks with the self-assurance and directness that comes from a youth of distinguished military service.

"At the time, Martin said she'd been calling from New York," Norris continued. "Said that she'd taken up with this guy Nissing.

But all this happens right at a time when Jammu is trying to get Martin's backing in this huge business venture she had cooked up.

She had half of India out here on this crazy land speculation. Nissing was one of them."

Did that mean that Norris believed Jammu was behind the shooting?

"Absolutely. Remember, I had men there the night Barbara was shot. She was out of the way just long enough for Jammu to seduce Martin, and then, when she was no longer of use to their plans, she was killed."

So why did Jammu commit suicide?

"Now that's a whole ‘nother kettle of wax. Jammu was running this big development scam, right?

She and her associates were going to buy out the entire downtown of St. Louis, or what they could get, invest huge amounts of public funds in it via a voter referendum, and then flip the property—probably get a hundred times what they paid for it.

They'd put in millions and get out billions, see? And all in the space of a year or two."

"But the referendum didn't pass. And all the associates were already back in India. The stooges had been killed. Her whole network was vanished.

They'd been counting on her to succeed, you see. There was no contingency for failure. So she took the Oriental way out. Hara Kiri."

That Hara Kiri is a Japanese concept doesn't seem to hamper Norris.

There is at least one other theory that has been voiced… by Probst's daughter, Luisa.

I tracked her down late last month to record her views on her mother’s relationship with Nissing.

Now in her thirties, wearing a shade too much make up and with longish hair a uniform tint of auburn, she still had an unsettled, uprooted look.

"I actually met Nissing, once,” she told me over an iced tea at the local TGI Friday’s. “He was trying to come on to me. Then a month later he runs off with Mom.

I know what Colonel Norris thinks—he's talked to me about it. As for Dad—he doesn't think about it at all. At least, he won't tell me anything.

"But I know this much: Mom gets shot the same night at that vote thing Dad was all worked up about. Nissing vanishes that night and the policewoman kills herself the next day.

And our house burns down that night too. My childhood home! That, and Mom, and Dad—that was my whole world. Now it's all gone."

Luisa opens her purse and pulls out a cigarette and lighter. “And I know who did it,” she adds darkly.

She flicks the lighter and takes a deep puff. "The whole thing was part of this master plot by the only one who stood to gain from ruining everything in my life.

The one man who needed my pain and suffering to make his evil schemes work."

She drags on the cigarette. As the tip flares bright red, she looks straight ahead with a fierce determination.

"That man is Jonathan Franzen," she says. Her eyes narrow. "He destroyed my father, murdered my mother, left the whole city of St. Louis a smouldering wreck.

That man is pure evil. The way he flayed my family, and left the entrails hanging out—he's, like, the Hannibal Lecter of novelists.

I'm going to find him. And I'm going to make him pay for what he did to me."

When asked how anyone could pay for killing her mother and bankrupting her father, she shakes her head impatiently, punctuating her sentences with stabs of the lit cigarette, looking, for all the world, like a young Jodi Foster.

"I don't care about all that. That was Luisa—the old character. The sidebar story about the spoiled college-age daughter.

In the next book, I want the starring role—the heroine of a love story. And not in this stupid little burg. In a world-class city. Boston would be good."

An evil smile lights her eyes, and she adds, "Tell Franzen to think of it as a correction."

Oh, Jonathan Franzen, where to begin?

Let me preface this by saying that I chose to read this book at random. I had just finished reading the latest lengthy installment of Robert Caro's masterful LBJ biography and I needed a fiction selection. I looked at my Amazon wish list of books to read, did a random number generator, and this book was at the top.

One more preface: just two days ago, after reading this book but before writing this review, I saw an excerpt of David Foster Wallace's biography where DFW had told Franzen how much he had liked this book, and Franzen replied to DFW that he had liked half of one of DFW's books. Somehow this seems appropriate, because "The Twenty-Seventh City" seems like half of a good book. The problem, however, is identifying which half.

If I had never read "The Corrections" or "Freedom" I think I might not have been as disappointed; either that or I wouldn't have had any idea of what to make of this book. You can tell that the future brilliance is there, particularly in his descriptions of Martin Probst, who is easily the most developed character. His plotline makes sense: he almost literally built St. Louis through his contracting business, yet he has little to no idea about how to maintain the structural integrity of his own family. If only the entire book had been about Probst.

Alas, it is not. The book is ostensibly about the installment of an Indian woman named S. Jammu as the new chief of the St. Louis Police Department. Her taking over of this position is supposed to set in motion some grand plan of wealthy Indians to take over St. Louis. But it never really happens. The motivations of Jammu and her "associates" are never really made clear, and aside from the horrific bombing of a football stadium during a Cardinals football game, nothing much of consequence really occurs. Franzen makes mention of a crime wave that spreads through the more upper-class suburbs, but no connection is ever made between that and anything else. The potential merging or severing of the city and the county is a major plot device that mostly just fizzles out at the end.

If you're reading this book you're probably aware that Franzen grew up in suburban St. Louis, and this book is somewhat of a love letter to the city, or at least what the city used to be. It touches on the changes that cities and their populaces go through when they try to cling to the prominence that is probably gone for good. That's not the problem, however. The problem is that the book is confusing as hell. There were many times I wish I had started making a chart of all the characters and how they were supposed to be intertwined, because Franzen didn't make it all that clear. Certain characters would have long sections and then I would never read their name again. And the ending is less than ideal. Also, I usually am not one to think that a book is too long, but this could've been pared down without losing much of import.

To be clear, this isn't a bad book. I don't think Franzen is capable of writing a bad book; he's too talented of a writer for that. But you can tell that it's a first book, and when you've read the fantastic novels that he's written since this one before reading this one, you're going to be frustrated. Read this if you want an idea of where Franzen came from, just don't expect perfection.

The best satire is indeed written from a place of love. Only someone who truly loves a subject can lampoon it with affectionate irreverence. Otherwise, it will come off as spiteful. It's kind of like teasing your sister.

In his first novel, “The Twenty Seventh City,” Saint Louis native Jonathan Franzen takes advantage of his intimate ties to that city. He reveals its follies and depredations, while still giving its citizens credit for their blithe persistence. Consider the fond poignancy of the following passage:

“Never conceding defeat, the prophets never asked. Nor did the old guiding spirits, whose good intentions had doomed the city; they’d moved their homes and operations to the county long ago. The question, if it arose at all, arose in silence, in the silence of the city’s empty streets and, more insistently, in the silence of the century separating a young Saint Louis from a dead one. What becomes of a city no living person can remember, of an age whose passing no one survives to regret. Only Saint Louis knew. Its fate was sealed within it, its tragedy special and nowhere else.”

Into this void of civic purpose steps S. Jammu, the new chief of police, freshly arrived from Bombay where, in a similar position, she was credited with performing miracles of urban renewal. However, Jammu is an ambitious schemer who contrives a plan for expanding her powers over the entire city and its suburbs.

“Given the interchangeability of corporate executives, Jammu insisted that her subjects in St. Louis remain functional. They had to stay in power, but with their faculties impaired.” But to achieve her goals, Jammu must confront opposition from the chair of the powerful Municipal Growth Committee, Martin Problems who “had no weaknesses.”

So, aided by her henchman, the suave and soulless Singh, she orchestrates the destruction of Probst’s carefully regulated life. She arranges for Prost’s teenage daughter to fall in love and run away from home. Singh seduces Probst’s wife, then when that doesn't achieve the desired results, he kidnaps her and makes it look like she has abandoned him for an illicit lover.

Through these trials, Probst is stoic: “Having just read his wife’s letter informing him that she’d left him for another man, “Probst stood up. His body leaned toward the dresser and his legs went along. He threw his wallet and his keys onto it. Well all right, he said.”

Where harsh measures fail, Jammu decides that perhaps a softer approach will work. Thus, she seduces Probst, who falls madly in love with her. In the process of defeating him, though, Jamme begins to have unwanted feelings toward him. Whether this fledgling couple has a chance is a moot point, because soon after they begin their affair, Jammu’s conspiracy unravels.

This copy is a 25th anniversary re-release of the book. Frankly, I found it to be a contrived attempt to cash in on the author’s subsequent success. Since the only addition to the book is a brief, desultory introduction that adds nothing to the reader’s appreciation of the book.

However, the poignancy of Franzen’s satire is undiminished, as is, I suspect, his begrudging affection for St. Louis.

The use of 'free indirect speech' in this episode is exceptionally good. It vividly describes the inner speech of the characters, making the audience feel as if they can directly access the characters' thoughts and emotions.

Moreover, the portrayal of the scenes is particularly subtle. The changes in the scenes are seamless, adding to the overall atmosphere and tension of the story.

However, in my opinion, the ending could have been better. It seems that the pace slows down a bit in the end, and the story becomes a bit dull.

Nonetheless, despite this small flaw, the episode as a whole is still very engaging and well-crafted. The use of 'free indirect speech' and the subtle scene changes are definite highlights that make this episode stand out.

I look forward to seeing more of this kind of excellent work in the future.

Several shifts in perspective occurred within the story, which made the character lines and plot rather difficult to follow. Similar to Franzen's The Corrections, not a single character was likable enough to truly engage me and make me extremely invested in the plot. I listened to this on audiobook, inspired by a Spring Break trio to Saint Louis. However, for the most part, it served merely as a filler during my drives or when I was running errands. It didn't have that captivating quality that would have made me eager to listen to it at every opportunity. The story seemed to lack a certain charm or depth that could have drawn me in and made me care deeply about what was happening. While it passed the time during those mundane activities, it didn't leave a lasting impression.

Let's engage in a detailed comparison between two of my most cherished writers in the contemporary era, namely Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace.

Both of them are masters in crafting magnificent, sprawling novels. Despite their epic lengths, these novels are not overly challenging to read. They adeptly express the distinct anxieties and loneliness that pervade our present age. It is highly likely that future scholars will remember them as representative writers of our times. However, it should be noted that their first novels were rather lackluster.

The Broom of the System gives the impression of a young writer's rather feeble attempts to engage with the style of Pynchon and his followers. Interestingly, The 27th City exhibits a similar trait.

Nonetheless, it must be made clear that there are still numerous moments within these books that are truly magnificent. Franzen is beginning to explore the themes that he would later develop more fully - the decline of the American dream, family issues, conspiracy, and so on. However, instead of concentrating on a few exquisitely realized characters, he opts for a Ben Hur-like cast-of-thousands approach, which, to be honest, is simply confounding. Martin Probst, one of the (more) central characters, could perhaps fit quite well into a later Franzen novel, but most of the other characters are little more than shadows flitting across the page.

If you are already a Franzen enthusiast, you might want to read these early works just to gain a better understanding of the writer's artistic evolution. Otherwise, it would be advisable to stick to his more renowned works such as Freedom or The Corrections.

What was supposed to happen? I didn't understand.

Rarely, as far as I'm concerned, have I had so many difficulties in bringing a novel to an end: an implausible subject; contrived plots; important characters capable of deciding the fate of an entire city; important characters completely at the mercy of events; gratuitous politico-economic-social digressions; mental monologues teetering between the profound and the incomprehensible.

And above all, page after page struggles to clarify the purpose of the actions, the overall picture.

The whole is submerged in a dark and melancholy atmosphere, almost completely devoid of irony or moments of relief. The city that serves as the backdrop is an aesthetic conglomerate of groups (racial, social, geographical), each of which is a miserable pawn on the political chessboard. And the individual characters, many of whom are richly sketched out although not very relevant, interact mainly in pairs, in a succession of dialogues and confrontations that are all too often stilted.

They tell me that the real Franzen is not this, and I have no reason to doubt it. Trustingly, I will make sure to give him the opportunity for a comeback.

Wow, this was truly bad.

There are Franzen books that I absolutely adore. However, as a young man, he put out a confused and jumbled conspiracy novel. I would even go so far as to call it offensive. Given the premise that Indian women seduce their way to power, I think it probably is. But it's so incoherent that I'm not even entirely sure.

I just read a review and discovered a character that I didn't even know existed. There are about 25 main characters, and approximately only four of them really stuck with me. I deeply regret picking up this book, and I even more regret finishing it.

It's truly astounding how good Franzen became after starting off so tragically bad. It makes one wonder what led to such a remarkable transformation in his writing.