Purity

Jonathan Franzen's fifth novel follows Purity Tyler, who goes by Pip, a 23-year-old in Oakland weighed down by $130,000 in student debt and living rent-free in a communal squat. Her reclusive mother, her only family, refuses to tell her who her father is, or even her own real name and age. Six sections move among the characters, among them Andreas Wolf, a German-born hacker who rose to fame after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Tom Aberant, a journalist and editor based in Denver.

It appears on a published list of every book Barack Obama recommended in office.