Living on borrowed money from his sister, Denise, Chip works obsessively on a screenplay, but finds no success or motivation to pay off his debts.

Eventually, Chip takes a job from his girlfriend's estranged husband Gitanas, an affable but corrupt Lithuanian government official, later moving to Vilnius and working to defraud American investors over the Internet.

Also living in Philadelphia, their youngest child Denise finds growing success as an executive chef despite Enid's disapproval, and is commissioned to open a new restaurant.

Flashbacks to her childhood show her responding to her repressed upbringing by beginning an affair with one of her father's subordinates, a married railroad signals worker.

Initially only Gary (without his wife or children) and Denise are present, while Chip is delayed by a violent political conflict in Lithuania, eventually arriving late after being attacked and robbed of all his savings.

Denise moves away from Philadelphia, and while Gary undergoes no drastic changes, Enid's newfound freedom from her husband causes her to be happier and less critical of her children's lives.

[6] In an interview with novelist Donald Antrim for Bomb, Franzen reflected on this stylistic shift, stating, "Simply to write a book that wasn't dressed up in a swashbuckling, Pynchon-sized megaplot was enormously difficult.

According to her, The Corrections stands apart from later works on similar themes because, unlike its successors, it does not become "hamstrung by the 9/11 problem" that preoccupied Bush-era novels by authors such as Don DeLillo, Jay McInerney, and Jonathan Safran Foer.

The Sunday Telegraph and New Statesman rated it "Pretty Good," while The Independent, The Spectator, and Times Literary Supplement classified it as "Ok."[17][18] Globally, Complete Review noted a lack of consensus, summarizing that "all grant [Franzen] is a gifted writer.

"[19] Critic John Leonard praised the novel’s exploration of the generation gap and intergenerational dynamics, stating it reminds readers "why you read serious fiction in the first place.

"[23] In 2009, the website The Millions polled 48 writers, critics, and editors, including Joshua Ferris, Sam Anderson, and Lorin Stein;[24] the panel voted The Corrections the best novel since 2000 "by a landslide.

[26] Entertainment Weekly included The Corrections in its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, stating, "Forget all the Oprah hoo-ha: Franzen's 2001 doorstop of a domestic drama teaches that, yes, you can go home again.

[33] Around this time, it was rumored that the cast would include Judi Dench as the family matriarch Enid, along with Brad Pitt, Tim Robbins and Naomi Watts as her three children.

[35] In September 2011, it was announced that Rudin and the screenwriter and director Noah Baumbach were preparing The Corrections as a "drama series project," to potentially co-star Anthony Hopkins and air on HBO.

[36] In a March 7, 2012, interview, McGregor confirmed that work on the film was "about a week" in and noted that both Dianne Wiest and Maggie Gyllenhaal were among the cast members.