Enid Lambert likely wouldn't approve of her children's activities, because ``[t]he one thing she knew categorically, the principle she embraced the more passionately the more it was ridiculed in the media and popular entertainments, was that sex before marriage was immoral.'' Enid lives in St. Jude, a fictional town in the Midwest named after the patron saint of lost causes. Fictional or not, her children couldn't wait to leave town for the east coast, as all citizens of the rural Midwest are archly conservative, culturally backward and hopelessly obese. Enid divides her time between caring for her husband Alfred, a retired engineer afflicted with Parkinson's disease, and trying to convince her children to come home for one last Christmas, while their father is still alive.

One final family Christmas is Enid's most fervent wish because, as Denise explains, ``she loves Christmas the way other people love sex.'' This wish of hers gives the novel its forward punch.

As Enid gets ahold of her children in the middle of their respective crises, we get to know each family member's background and circumstances. Chip's role in the academy leads to some funny observations about the country's English departments, and Gary's world of SUVs and corporate seminars is well, if exhaustively, detailed. Some of Franzen's best writing, however, is about Alfred and his affliction. Perhaps this is surprising because Franzen at 42 is still a young man, unacquainted with the troubles of old age. Nonetheless, descriptions such as this one, of Alfred trying to eat one of his daughter's appetizers while his hands are shaking, are masterly: ``As if waiting for a break in a downpour so that he could run from his car into a grocery store, he waited for a lull in his tremor so that he could reach out and safely eat what she'd brought him.''

Enid's children do eventually make it to St. Jude at Christmas, for reasons of guilt or responsi-bility or simply feeling lost. This is the novel's centerpiece, and it's an elegant one. Watching this family try to take care of itself--and doing about as well as you'd expect--is involving and even moving. But Franzen puts a lot of other stuff on the table as well. There are several minor subplots and asides, including ones about anarchists, serial killers, the basics of metallurgy, and the economic history of Lithuania.

Some of these seem tacked on and only distantly related to the main story. Now, there's nothing wrong with ambition. If Franzen wants to take a group portrait of American society in the late 20th century, he's welcome to try. But in his effort to include something of everything, heads are cropped and people off to the side make goofy faces, distracting readers from the main characters. Franzen is a strong writer, but anyone would be hard pressed to form so many disparate elements into a cohesive whole.

As it stands, The Corrections is still a good book with much to offer. But if it had had some of its fat trimmed it could have been a better, leaner story.