As this is Christmas it is an appropriate time to recommend a novel I have just finished: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It is one long prologue to a family Christmas which is eagerly anticipated and dreaded in equal parts. The Christmas is both a resounding success and a complete failure, but I shall not give away the reasons for this.

The story concerns a family of adult children and their elderly parents, one of whom is demented, possibly both. I think anyone involved in looking after parents in decline will find much that is familiar in this story, although how it will be received is entirely a matter for the individual. A friend of mine told me she finished the book in tears, while sitting in a cafe, and was comforted by the waiter. I, on the other hand, thought the book was funny, tragi-comic perhaps, but memorable for some hilarious episodes (the hallucinations of the father, while on a pleasure cruise, stand out as one of the funniest).

Franzen has drawn some very perceptive characterisations of the elderly. He dwells on their anxious preoccupations, the discontinuities of their time, their peculiar juxtaposition of the banal with the surreal, their desperate attempts to keep things right when all seems to be going wrong, both inside and outside their bodies. He also deals with the disparities in how offspring can view the same parents, and how rapidly these views can get knocked around by experience. Franzen also faces up to the disgust and ridicule declining grandparents can engender in their grandchildren.

Apart from all the family insights, there was for me a special pleasure in reading this book. Much of it is set in Seminole Street, Chestnut Hill - 100 yards from where I once lived. The location, one of Philadelphia's wealthiest and most self-regarding suburbs, was crucial to the story, since it is a symbol for the one son for whom appearances and status are priorities. Appearances and status are some of the earliest casualties in dementia. His fate is therefore sealed.

The Corrections is also well-written, creative in its use of English, and full of arresting metaphors. I could have enjoyed it on this level alone.

I'd be interested in hearing from others who have read it - to learn whether it was seen as a tragedy or a comedy.