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We're pleased to announce that Francesca Brooks has won our inaugural Short Story competition with 'Over the Weather and Under the Moon'. See the details, and her story, here.

New Zealand Post Books Award Winners

The winners of this years NZ Post Book Awards have been announced! Congratulations Judith Binney, Alison Wong, Brian Turner and Al Brown. See our Literary Prize page for details!

Free Delivery on General Books!

vicbooks has, with the help of our genius web-monkeys, made all General Books bought online freight free anywhere within NZ! See our blog for the details.

Browse all our VUP titles, latest offerings and prize winners, or have a look through our past newsletters. Better yet, sign up for our newsletter and get the latest deals, discounts and reviews.


Good Man Jesus & The Scoundrel Christ $39.00


Tinkers $26.99


Sport 38 NZ Writing Winter 2010 $20.00


Lords of Finance $34.99

Our Scrawl

Entries have closed for vicbooks' first writing competition and we're all taking a deep breath and taking stock of the experience... read more

Editing Enid

Hodder, the UK publisher of Enid Blyton's work, has decided they are going to "sensitively and carefully" revise the text of her books... read more

Influences and Inspiration - De Goldi, Farrell and Perkins

Kate De Goldi, Fiona Farrell and Emily Perkins talk about their influences and inspirations... read more

Power to the Paper: the inverted opportunity of eBooks

With the dawn of the ebook emerging from the crepuscular stage, publishers are desperate for a model to cling to so they surf ride the burgeoning light towards the morning tea-time of the ebook market. Strangely, I think, this... read more

NZ Post Book Awards, 2010.

All in all, the finalists are a bit disappointing... read more

Ulysses vs. Apple... well, almost.

While the Irish (and large numbers of other literary admirers) revel in Ulysses' history, many others are haggling over its present. Throwaway Horse, who has been adapting Ulysses into an online comic... read more

The Bestest Tweet of All

Stephen Fry, at the Hay Festival in Wales, announced the most beautiful tweet - spake by Canuck medical physicist Marc MacKenzie. Probably spoken quietly to himself as he shoulder-barged the particle accelerator... read more

New Yorker's 20 under 40 list

The editors of the New Yorker have constructed a list of the 20 best authors under 40 years of age. This must be one hell of a daunting task and, while I don't envy the arguments that will inevitably ensue over perceived, extant or absent talent, I'd still quite like to overhear them... read more

Men Don't Read

Apparently, within the publishing industry at large, there is a maxim that stomps around deeply affecting the books produced: 'Men don't read'. The maxim brings... read more

Freedom - Jonathan Franzen.jpg
RRP $38.99

Our Price (freight free) $35.00

Buy now

Freedom

by Jonathan Franzen

With moral intelligence and surprisingly ribald wit Freedom's characters ask us what liberty is. His characters are our limited and contradictory ideas of freedom. They play out the consequences of liberty, its realities and illusions. Franzen's characterizations breathe detail and reality into his protagonists: Richard, a sardonic rock-god, self-indulgently railing against societal norms. Walter Berglund, the very personification of meliorism, confounded by his high ideals, is crippled by his inability to express the love or anger that fill him. And Walter's wife, Patty, a self-loathing, ex-athlete who doubts the validity and merit of her life; the Autobiographer, able to see the harm she does yet incapable of stemming the love that drives her harm. If the other characters are the currents of the novel, Patty is the body of water they run through. Patty expresses the constraints and expressions of freedom; all its complexity, damnation and beauty. Patty, and the extended Berglund family, is testament to the moments of perfect horror and beauty that make a life; moments emblazoned on personalities so deeply they can be passed through generations and societies like DNA.

So, where have all the social novels gone? Who is it that's roaring? Freedom is a great social novel - it is brilliant. But Franzen doesn't roar - he places his hand gently on your left shoulder while whispering, calmly and kindly, in your left ear. Until all you can see is the reality he describes. The novel is life bound in paper sheaths; an idea explored in a narrative of warmth and great intelligence, carried forward by characters of depth and profound flaw. It is an all consuming narrative about how to live.