I've been sitting on this review for a few days, because I have no idea where to start. Because to know where to begin a review would mean you understood what was going on, and there's so much going on here that it's impossible to begin. 
 So I'll begin with Pip: And Pip, the "main character" if we want to use the term, is amazing. She's unspectacular. Her job is cold calling for a product she doesn't understand; she's averagely pretty; she has student loan debt. She lives in a squatter house. Her life is boring, but she's so sarcastic and unintentionally witty that I loved her by page two. 
 But what is this book about? Because Pip gets hired as an intern at the Sunlight Project, whose founder (Andreas Wolf) is up there with the world's most popular people and is loved by everyone--aka, the complete opposite of Pip. So why does he want her to work for his little project? 
 This is one of those massive books that goes into every little detail about every little character, where you know they'll all be connected at some point. And the characters do piece together, little by little: Pip, and her mentally unstable mother. Andreas Wolf and the woman who works for him. And then a journalist, a reporter, a girl who works in a fast-food joint... we know all of them. We know their histories and their parents' histories. Do we need to know so many details about their lives? Probably not. That's why I'm only giving this four stars. 
 But this is about Pip, and I adore Pip. It was worth reading two hundred pages without her appearing, knowing she'd come back. And a lot of this may be about nothing, but Franzen could write the nutrition facts on a box of cereal and I'd keep it on my shelf. So I'm not really the best judge. 
 Here's a quote from a character who had nothing to do with anything by the end, but got a lot of screentime somewhere in the middle: (Actually, there were a few of those...) 
 "So many Jonathans. A plague of literary Jonathans. If you read only the New York Times Book Review, you'd think it was the most common male name in America. Synonymous with talent, greatness." 
 Well played. 
 I wholly disliked Freedom, but Purity is beginning to make up for that.