The Corrections - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The Corrections focuses on the Lamberts, a traditional and somewhat repressed Midwestern family, whose children have fled to the east coast to start new lives free from the influence of their parents. The novel moves back and forth in time throughout the late twentieth century, depicting the personal growth and mistakes of each family member in detail. The book climaxes around the time of the technology driven economic boom of the late nineties as the troubled family's problems begin to boil to the surface.

Alfred Lambert is a railroad engineer and the stern patriarch of the Lambert family, based in the fictional town of St. Jude. After his children grow up and move to the east coast, Alfred retires, but soon begins to suffer from Parkinson's disease, causing his organized and repressed personality to fracture. Alfred's loyal wife Enid has long suffered from his tyrannical behavior, but his increasing dementia makes her life still harder. She is also tortured by the questionable life choices of her three children and their abandonment of midwestern Protestant values. As the economic boom of the late nineties goes into full swing, the family's massive problems become impossible to ignore.

Gary, the eldest Lambert son, is a successful but seemingly depressed and alcoholic banker in Philadelphia who suspects his life is carefully controlled by his manipulative wife and children. Chip, the middle child, is a Marxist academic whose disastrous affair with a student loses him a tenure-track job and lands him in the employ of a Lithuanian crime boss defrauding American investors. Denise, the youngest of the family, is a successful chef in Philadelphia but loses her job after interlocking romances with both her boss and his wife.

The separate plot-lines converge on Christmas morning back in St. Jude, when Enid and her children are forced to confront Alfred's accelerating physical and mental decline.