Four Freedoms

Categories: Fiction

I posted several months ago about John Crowley’s Lord Byron’s Novel, a complex literary/historical puzzler about Byron and his mathematically-minded daughter, Ada, Countess of Lovelace.

Crowley’s new novel, Four Freedoms, is very different, a very American story. It’s set on the homefront during World War II, when people’s lives were tossed up like decks of cards and came down in configurations they could not previously have imagined.

The novel’s main character is Prosper Olander, a young man with a severe curvature of the spine. Despite the botched operation that has left him unable to walk without crutches, he is an optimistic and curious person—qualities that make him more successful with women than other men might imagine.

Prosper has escaped his hometown and a charity job to work at a huge bomber manufacturing plant in Oklahoma. The prefab town that has mushroomed overnight to house the plant’s thousands of workers is home to many others who have left their pasts behind.

There, Prosper’s generous curiosity about the people he meets leads to the retelling of their stories in a narrative that folds back and back to explore how people came to that rootless, modern town.

The result is a novel that feels as big and open as the Oklahoma plains where it is set. The sense of large social shifts set in motion by the war is integral to the book. Whether you’re interested in the period, which Crowley brings vividly to life, or simply enjoy great fiction, you’ll find this wonderfully readable.