Play “Freebird,” man!
Franzen’s Freedom makes green literary

Jonathan FranzenNovelist Jonathan Franzen made a splash (think massive cannonball) with Freedom, which was lauded as the “great American novel,” “best book galvanic,” “exquisite,” and “a work of total genius.” What many of the big-shot critics and tastemakers failed to mention is that the book is also “environmental.” Franzen gave Grist the exclusive scoop on the green themes in his book, which include overpopulation, mountaintop-removal mining, and the menace of bloodthirsty house cats.

(Green-fiction runner-up: Solar by Ian McEwan, about a loathsome Nobel-Prize-winning-physicist-turned-cleantech-entrepreneur-and-climate-crusader.)