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Jul 29, 2008

Bess rated it:

This novel is really wonderful in the same way that Pink Floyd is really wonderful... but you know how if you listen to Pink Floyd alone on a cloudy day, you'll spiral into a bone-chillingly real, suicidal depression? All the while consciously maintaining that it's fantastically beautiful music, and knowing somewhere deep down inside from the blackest of your darkness that you'd be completely fine if you'd just listened to Supertramp instead?

That's a powerful phenomenon, and you sho More...

6 comments like (40 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2008

Laura rated it:

What a great read! This novel was a perfect family drama to get absorbed in. It's the story of the McKotch family, who tend to keep everything bottled up and simultaneously get upset when the others don't understand them. It is written in 3rd person, and each chapter covers the events/thoughts of a different character. The writing was perfect- not too wordy while beautifully conveying exactly how each person felt. Prudish, smothering mother, Paulette and the scientist/workaholic father, Frank ra More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jun 11, 2008

Jeff rated it:

Jennifer Haigh is a wonderful, intelligent storyteller. I really enjoyed "Mrs. Kimble" and "Baker Towers," and was no less enthralled with "The Condition." Her characters are beautifully drawn and incredibly human.

The title suggests that the book is about a single "condition," but there are as many "conditions" in the novel as there are characters. Ultimately, I feel the title refers to the "human condition," the need to be

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

Aug 11, 2008

Lara rated it:

This book involves a young girl (and her family) who is diagnosed with a condition called Turner’s Syndrome, which prevents her body from ever maturing into or beyond puberty. When I started reading this, I did so with the notion that girl with Turner’s was the center of the book, and that the rest of the story focused on how her family dealt with (or failed to deal with) her condition.

In some ways, I was right. In actuality, though, the book is not really about the condition of Turn More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 29, 2008

Nomi rated it:

I love all Jennifer Haigh's books. This one is a little different from my all-time favorite--Baker's Towers. Less emphasis on class divisions and working class lifeways but still a strong focus on intergenerational strife and the unfolding of a family's history over the decades. In this case it's a wealthy New England family's unmaking that Haigh focuses on spanning the 70s through the 90s. We gain access to all the voices of the McKotches -parents (Frank the geneticist and Paulette who remains More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 11, 2008

Laura rated it:

What a beautiful book. I can't say enough good things about it and when I say "I can't," I mean " I don't have time." But I'm thinking lots of really good things about it and words like "moving," "intelligent," "honest to the bone," "brilliantly constructed," "characters you can believe in (with apologies to Barack,) and "I didn't want it to end," all figure in my thoughts.
Read this book.

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jul 30, 2008

Ellen rated it:

I've come to count Jennifer Haigh as an author whose next work I look forward to reading. I enjoyed both MRS. KIMBLE and BAKER TOWERS for the same reason: They both feature a compelling ensemble of characters. Here too, with THE CONDITION, Haigh has shown her strength. However, the book is less about the condition to which the title refers--Turner's Syndrome, afflicting one of the main characters--and more about some really fascinating family dynamics. A good book group choice, for sure. Plenty More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 01, 2008

Sarah rated it:

A very touching novel, written with graceful and articulate prose. 'The Condition' is not so much about the literal condition (Turners Syndrome), but about a Family and about change and growth; the passing of time and the effects it has on an individual and on a family. Haigh successfully interweaves the characters, all of whom are dynamic and believable. I read this novel in two days -- it was almost impossible to put down. My only criticism is how Haigh neatly wraps up the ending.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 23, 2008

Melissa rated it:

I really loved this book! The story is told from the perspective of many characters in the McKotch Family, which reminded me of another book I enjoyed Three Junes....their flaws and shortcomings come out and yet you still enjoy them and root for them. The ending was very satisfying. I'd like to read her other books. Thanks to Eliza for recommending this book!

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 18, 2009

malic rated it:

This book is a good second best to The Corrections or "Six Feet Under"- a family drama, told in turn from each of the five member's perspective, complete with a gay son, a daughter with Turner's syndrome, a son with ADHD, an overbearing mom, and absent scientific father.

At first I thought it was going to be a cliche of heterosexuality - the book starts from the mom's perspective obsessing about whether or not her husband loves her, finds her attractive, is having affairs More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 12, 2008

Julie rated it:

From the author of Baker Towers and Mrs. Kimble, Jennifer Haigh, comes her long-awaited new novel, The Condition. Set in and around Massachusetts, The Condition tells the story of a family that is torn apart by a daughter’s medical condition. Or rather that is merely the crutch everyone uses to blame their dysfunctional situation.

The story opens in 1976 when the McKotch family makes heads to Cape Cod and the familial retreat. Paulette, Frank, and their three children—Billy, Gwen, More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 10, 2008

Kelly rated it:

Since her first novel Mrs. Kimble, I’ve enjoyed Jennifer Haigh’s work. Her third novel, The Condition, is another very fast, interesting and thought provoking read. Told from the perspective of all five members of the McKotch family, it centers around the family relationships once the middle child, Gwen, is diagnosed with Turner’s Syndrome (a condition in which a girl does not go through puberty, her physical body staying trapped in a 13 year old body). Haigh captures the plight of each famil More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 08, 2009

Tara rated it:

I wanted to love this book because I love Jennifer Haigh. What an amazingly talented author! I watch for her new books and got The Condition right away. I think that, as a whole, the story is very satisfying and I enjoyed the ending. I almost gave up on it, though. There's about 100 pages of backstory, which I suppose is important to getting the end, but I got tired of reading all this authorial explanation. I liked the scenes, which were prominent in the very beginning and at the end, much more More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 09, 2008

Anita rated it:

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's a fascinating look at a family of flawed, but good people and the effect they have on each other's lives. Particularly powerful is the Mother who is perhaps the most flawed of all. Though well-meaning her issues are so great that the impact on the family is near-devastating. Yet you find yourself not hating her or angry at her, (unlike the mother in August:Osage County) but rather wishing you could sit her down and give her a good talking to and make her und More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 11, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

The "condition" in the title is daughter Gwen's Turner's Syndrome, but the whole novel is really about the condition, individually and collectively, of the entire McKotch family, Paulette (mom), Frank (dad), Billy (the oldest), Scott (the youngest), and, of course, Gwen. I really liked how Haigh lets you see the characters from both their own and other's perspectives...you think you know them, but you don't get the full picture until they begin to tell their stories from their own per More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 23, 2008

Kevin rated it:

The Condition the title refers to is Turner's syndrome. A condition in which young girls never go through puberty,leaving them women, locked in girls bodies. The story can be summed up by one wonderful paragraph very late in the novel:

"She no longer wonders what is normal,whether she feels correctly. It is impossible to say.Her whole life she's known that her condition is untreatable. Now she understands that it requires no treatment. The difference is vast;you could fit a w More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 07, 2008

melanie (lit*chick) rated it:

3.5 actually. Worth a read if you like family dramas. Each character has their own story and the author has the ability to make them sympathetic and frustrating at the same time.

The story revolves around a family in the decades following the discovery that their daughter has Turner's syndrome. This means she will never go through puberty, and be able to have children, she is forever suspended in time as a child. It isn't just her condition that plagues them, but each deals with a con More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 02, 2009

Christina rated it:

The basis of The Condition is Gwen’s actual condition — a chromosomal abnormality called Tuner Syndrome, which means she will never go through puberty and will forever be stuck in the body of an eleven-year-old child — but the real story is that the condition of her family post-diagnosis. The marriage of her parents, Frank and Paulette, disintegrates following her father’s observation, but their marriage was long on the rocks before that fateful day on Cape Cod. Her younger brother, Scott, runs More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 19, 2009

emi rated it:

I'd been struggling through a different novel for a week, only able to read a chapter or two a day; I didn't like the characters, couldn't remember what was going on each time I picked it up so I'd have to go back and re-read a couple pages, meh. So yesterday I started reading The Condition instead, and I absolutely loved everything about it immediately - the writing, the story, especially all the characters. I just felt enveloped by it all, sucked up in it, completely absorbed.

I w More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 19, 2011

Katie rated it:

A very satisfying read.

I love the siblings character development, and how they aren't all three equally close, which is how it works in families.

The father is fully developed and I became very fond of him, though I don't believe his choice at the end of the book is realistic for him.

The mom vacillated for me between quirky and annoying. Not a likeable person for me on any level.

Something that stands out is the dialogue throughout where the author uses a c More...

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Jan 17, 2011

Will rated it:

The flap copy states that the core event in the book is Gwen’s “condition,” but I did not really get that from reading the book. Her medical condition is one of several conditions addressed in the book, emotional conditions, maybe the “human condition.” This is a domestic novel, a multigenerational portrait of a family, focusing on the period between 1976 when we first meet them, summering in The Captain’s House in Cape Cod, and concluding in 1998, by which time the issues raised have come to f More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 12, 2011

Judith rated it:

The key character in this story has "Turners Syndrome" which is apparently a condition that stunts physical growth. I could really relate to her pain as she watched all her girlfriends develop and grow and wondered and worried about her own development. I was a late bloomer myself back in the days before chicken was stuffed full of hormones causing all our girls to sprout breasts at the tender age of 10. I think there was a character in John Irving's "Hotel New Hampshire" More...

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Oct 01, 2010

Sarah rated it:

Just seeing a book by Jennifer Haigh gives me the chills -- in a good way! I fell in love with her after reading Mrs. Kimble (2003) and I've been hooked since.

The premise of The Condition centers on the McKotch family and how they deal with the fact that daughter Gwen has Turner's syndrome, a genetic illness that prevents her body from maturing past pre-teenhood. The novel is apparently about how Gwen's illness affects her two brothers and her parents throughout their lives, but what More...

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Jun 07, 2010

Lindsey rated it:

I was disappointed in this book. In fact, I never finished it. This book is about a young girl that discovers while on a family vacation that she is smaller than her cousin who is the same age. The family is perplexed as they realize that she actually looks the same as she did a couple of years ago. After a trip to the doctors office it is confirmed that she does in fact have a form of dwarfism.

I was under the impression that the book would follow her life and how she was able to get More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 04, 2010

Pat rated it:

Though the novel's title takes its cue from science and medicine, Haigh uses her sprawling family story plot to explore a wide variety of issues facing the 'everyman': the prospect of missing one's dream and waking up one morning to realize that all the doors are closed behind you; the inevitability of aging and the problem of increased hunger for affection at a time when one is least likely to get it; the ways in which we treat other people as a foil for our own selfishness and need for attenti More...

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Mar 02, 2010

Tim rated it:

Gwen McKotch's medical condition — Turner's syndrome that stalled her growth as a teen — is rare. The splintering of her New England family, the unintended cruelties of growing apart, sadly is not so unusual. But in "The Condition" Jennifer Haigh performs the difficult trick of making these often selfish people sympathetic and understandable. Haigh's writing is to-the-point elegant and in control, qualities one expects by now from graduates of the Iowa Writers Workshop at the Universit More...

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Dec 18, 2009

Louise rated it:

Jennifer Haigh has managed to pen a gripping account of the McKotch family's tragic history with humour and compassion. When a family faces tragedy, illness or other emotionally and life-changing events, it's sometimes difficult to accept and we instead live in denial, refusing to believe what is happening in our own family, to our own kin. Frank and Paulette's daughter, Gwen, has been diagnosed with a genetic condition that keeps her trapped, for her entire life, in the body of a child. However More...

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Aug 27, 2009

Melissa rated it:

I’m just going to rip into this book…

I got this book, because it looked interesting. Reading about Turner Syndrome (something I knew nothing about) and how it affects a family appealed to me.

I was up to page 100 before anything was mentioned about the disease. It’s been a quick read, but it just talks about a family and what they are all about. So far nothing is jumping out at me.

Page 123. Still nothing. Scott seems to be getting the most attention i More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Apr 28, 2009

Kody rated it:

Opening to a summer that is supposed to be filled with fun, THE CONDITION allows us a brief image of what the family is going through. Paulette, unsure about her husband's faith; Frank, unsure about his job, research and marriage; Billy, who isn't sure about the feelings he's experiencing; Scotty, who's still a child and has nothing to worry about; and Gwen, our main character, who is unsure about the way her body is developing.

When Gwen is diagnosed with Turner Syndrome--a disease More...

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Once again, Jennifer Haigh has proven herself to be "a gifted chronicler of the human condition" (Washington Post). Here, she asks piercing questions about the nature of family relationships. The narrative starts at a leisurely pace but gains momentum during Gwen's awakening to the world. Haigh's graceful, evocative prose lays bare her heartbreakingly genuine characters, particularly Gwen and Scott, whose individual struggles will resonate with readers despite the surfeit of background

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