Crossroads

Jonathan Franzen was recommended to me as the kind of writer who populates his books with almost wholly unlikeable characters, but it doesn't detract from the reading experience because they are layered and interesting, regardless.
So, when I spotted Crossroads at the local station free book exchange, I thought it was worth giving it a go.
Initially, I found the prose quite difficult to parse in places - he does love an overly long sentence with too many subordinate clauses! But either the prose settled down or I settled into it, as that became much less of a problem as it went along.
All the characters were, indeed, unlikeable - the story follows Russ and Marion, a married couple, and their four children, in the US in the early 70s. There are five viewpoint characters (the youngest son doesn't get a POV) and I read a chapter from each, which ended up being 190 pages of the 580-page book.
All of them were self-involved, self-loathing (to a greater or lesser extent) and self-aware only in the sense of being disgusted by their own behaviour but apparently unable to change it (which is relatable, but not particularly entertaining to read about).
I did like the chapter from the point of view of the second-youngest child, Perry - but I wasn't prepared to read all the others just to get back round to him, especially since the chapters were pretty long.
So, after very definitely giving it plenty of time to really grab me, I decided not to continue.