The Condition

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More About This Book

Overview

The Condition tells the story of a proper New England family that comes apart one fateful summer. To their dismay, Frank and Paulette McKotch's daughter, Gwen, has been diagnosed with Turner's syndrome—a genetic condition that leaves her trapped forever in the body of a child, and sparks heated dispute between the couple.

Twenty years later, their three children—now grown, and each struggling with secret conditions of their own—are still dealing with the fallout of Frank and Paulette's divorce. Then, suddenly, Gwen falls in love for the first time, and the family's world is again tilted on its axis.

In an era when individual quirks look increasingly like symptoms and every symptom demands to be treated, the McKotches are determined to fix themselves and each other. They are a family for our time.

  • Jennifer Haigh
    Jennifer Haigh

Editorial Reviews

Chris Bohjalian
Haigh has demonstrated in her previous two novels, Mrs. Kimble and Baker Towers, an unerring ability to chronicle the ways people delude themselves—those lies we tell ourselves daily to survive. And in The Condition her touch with characterization is usually sure. Occasionally, Paulette's monumental repression and Billy's gay domesticity feel a tad cliched, but generally Haigh's characters are layered and authentic. Moreover, one would have to have a heart of stone not to care for them and follow their small sagas…I cared so much for each member of the McKotch clan that I was…happy to have spent time with them, and to have witnessed them growing up and old and, finally, learning to accept who they are.
—The Washington Post
More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
From The Critics

Haigh's third novel relates the heartbreaking story of Gwen McKotche, a young woman inflicted with Turner's syndrome, which will forever trap her in the body of a child, and her family's trials and tribulations. With flawed yet honest and caring characters, Jennifer Van Dyck relates the story in a believable voice drenched in sadness without editorializing. Van Dyck delivers a solid reading that displays her knack for emotional storytelling while still allowing her audience the privilege of commanding their own emotions for the majority of the tale. Van Dyck never tries to force sympathy and tears from her audience, but will have no problem bringing them to the surface of each listener. A Harper hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 18). (July)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780060755782
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 7/1/2008
  • Pages: 400
  • Sales rank: 909,113
  • Product dimensions: 6.30 (w) x 9.10 (h) x 1.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Jennifer Haigh
Jennifer Haigh
With her PEN/Hemingway Award-winning debut, Mrs. Kimble (2003), Jennifer Haigh established herself as a writer to watch. Since then, this dazzling young novelist and short story writer has demonstrated an uncanny knack for creating rich, complex characters whose lives resonate with real-world rhythms.

Biography

The daughter of a librarian and a high school English teacher, Jennifer Haigh was raised with her older brother in the coal-mining town of Barnesboro, Pennsylvania. Although she began writing as a student at Dickinson College, her undergraduate degree was in French. After college, she moved to France on a Fulbright Scholarship, returning to the U.S. in 1991.

Haigh spent most of the decade working in publishing, first for Rodale Press in Pennsylvania, then for Self magazine in New York City. It was not until her 30th birthday that she was bitten by the writing bug. She moved to Baltimore (where it was cheaper to live), supported herself as a yoga instructor, and began to publish short stories in various literary magazines. She was accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop and enrolled in their two-year M.F.A. program. While she was at Iowa, she completed the manuscript for her first novel, Mrs. Kimble. She also caught the attention of a literary agent scouting the grad school for new talent and was signed to a two-book contract. Haigh was astonished at how quickly everything came together.

Mrs. Kimble became a surprise bestseller when it was published in 2003. Readers and critics alike were bowled over by this accomplished portrait of a "serial marrier" and the three wives whose lives he ruins. The Washington Post raved, "It's a clever premise, backed up by three remarkably well-limned Mrs. Kimbles, each of whom comes tantalizingly alive thanks to the author's considerable gift for conjuring up a character with the tiniest of details." The novel went on to win the PEN/Hemingway Award for Outstanding First Fiction.

Skeptics who wondered if Haigh's success had been mere beginner's luck were set straight when Baker Towers appeared in 2005. A multigenerational saga set in a Pennsylvania coal-mining community in the years following WWII, the novel netted Haigh the PEN/L.L. Winship Award for outstanding book by a New England author. (Haigh lives in Massachusetts.) The New York Times called it "captivating," and Kirkus Reviews described it as "[a]lmost mythic in its ambition, somewhere between Oates and Updike country, and thoroughly satisfying." High praise indeed for a sophomore effort.

In fact, Haigh continues to produce dazzling literary fiction in both its short and long forms, much of it centered on the interwoven lives of families. When asked why she returns so often to this theme, she answers, " In fact, every story is a family story: we all come from somewhere, and it's impossible to write well-developed characters without giving a great deal of thought to their childhood environments, their early experiences, and whose genetic material they're carrying around."

Good To Know

In our interview with Haigh, she shared some fun facts about herself:

"All my life I've fantasized about being invisible. I love the idea of watching people when they don't know they're being observed. Novelists get to do that all the time!"

"When I was a child, I told my mother I wanted to grow up to be a genie, a gas station attendant, or a writer. I hope I made the right choice."

    1. Hometown:
      Boston, Massachusetts
    1. Date of Birth:
      October 16, 1968
    2. Place of Birth:
      Barnesboro, Pennsylvania
    1. Education:
      B.A., Dickinson College, 1990; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop, 2002

Read an Excerpt

The Condition

1976

The Captain's House

Summer comes late to Massachusetts. The gray spring is frosty, unhurried: wet snow on the early plantings, a cold lesson for optimistic gardeners, for those who have not learned. Chimneys smoke until Memorial Day. Then, all at once, the ceiling lifts. The sun fires, scorching the muddy ground.

At Cape Cod the rhythm is eternal, unchanging. Icy tides smash the beaches. Then cold ones. Then cool. The bay lies warming in the long days. Blue-lipped children brave the surf. They opened the house the third week in June, the summer of the bicentennial, and of Paulette's thirty-fifth birthday. She drove from Concord to the train station in Boston, where her sister was waiting, then happily surrendered the wheel. Martine was better in traffic. She'd been better in school, on the tennis court; for two years straight she'd been the top-ranked singles player at Wellesley. Now, at thirty-eight, Martine was a career girl, still a curiosity in those days, at least in her family. She worked for an advertising agency on Madison Avenue—doing what, precisely, Paulette was not certain. Her sister lived alone in New York City, a prospect she found terrifying. But Martine had always been fearless.

The station wagon was packed with Paulette's children and their belongings. Billy and Gwen, fourteen and twelve, rode in the backseat, a pile of beach towels between them. Scotty, nine and so excited about going to the Cape that he was nearly insufferable, had been banished to the rear.

"God, would you look at this?" Martine downshifted, shielding her eyes from the sun. The traffic had slowed to acrawl. The big American engines idled loudly, the stagnant air rich with fumes. The Sagamore Bridge was still half a mile away. "It gets worse every year. Too many goddamned cars."

A giggle from the backseat, Gwen probably. Paulette frowned. She disapproved of cursing, especially by women, especially in front of children.

"And how was the birthday?" Martine asked. "I can't believe la petite Paulette is thirty-five. Did you do anything special?"

Her tone was casual; she may not have known it was a tender subject. Like no birthday before, this one had unsettled Paulette. The number seemed somehow significant. She'd been married fifteen years, but only now did she feel like a matron.

"Frank took me into town. We had a lovely dinner." She didn't mention that he'd also reserved a room at the Ritz, a presumptuous gesture that irritated her. Like all Frank's presents, it was a gift less for her than for himself.

"Will he grace us with his presence this year?"

Paulette ignored the facetious tone. "Next weekend, maybe, if he can get away. If not, then definitely for the Fourth."

"He's teaching this summer?"

"No," Paulette said carefully. "He's in the lab." She always felt defensive discussing Frank's work with Martine, who refused to understand that he wasn't only a teacher but also a scientist. (Molecular developmental biology, Paulette said when anyone asked what he studied. This usually discouraged further questions.) Frank's lab worked year-round, seven days a week. Last summer, busy writing a grant proposal, he hadn't come to the Cape at all. Martine seemed to take this as a personal slight, though she'd never seemed to enjoy his company. He's an academic, she'd said testily. He gets the summers off. Isn't that the whole point? It was clear from the way she pronounced the word what she thought of academics. Martine saw in Frank the same flaws Paulette did: his obsession with his work, his smug delight in his own intellect. She simply didn't forgive him, as Paulette—as women generally—always had. Frank had maintained for years that Martine hated him, a claim Paulette dismissed. Don't be silly. She's very fond of you. (Why tell such a lie? Because Martine was family, and she ought to be fond of Frank. Paulette had firm ideas, back then, of how things ought to be. )

In Truro the air was cooler. Finally the traffic thinned. Martine turned off the highway and onto the No Name Road, a narrow lane that had only recently been paved. Their father had taught the girls, as children, to recite the famous line from Thoreau: Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts. The shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay; the elbow at Cape Mallebarre; the wrist at Truro; and the sandy fist at Provincetown.

Remembering this, Paulette felt a stab of tenderness for her father. Everett Drew had made his living as a patent attorney, and viewed ideas as property of the most precious kind. In his mind Thoreau was the property of New England, of Concord, Massachusetts, perhaps even particularly of the Drews.

"Is Daddy feeling better?" Paulette asked. "I've been worried about his back." Martine had just returned from Florida, where their parents had retired and Ev was now recovering from surgery. Paulette visited when she could, but this was no substitute for Sunday dinners at her parents' house, the gentle rhythm of family life, broken now, gone forever.

"He misses you," said Martine. "But he made do with me."

Paulette blinked. She was often blindsided by how acerbic her sister could be, how in the middle of a pleasant conversation Martine could deliver a zinger that stopped her cold: the backhanded compliment, the ripe apple with the razor inside. When they were children she'd often crept up behind Paulette and pulled her hair for no reason. It wasn't her adult life, alone in a big city, that had made Martine prickly. She had always been that way.

They turned off the No Name Road onto a rutted path. It being June, the lane was rugged, two deep tire tracks grown in between with grass. By the end of summer, it would be worn smooth. The Captain's House was set squarely at the end of it, three rambling stories covered in shingle. A deep porch wrapped around three sides.

The Condition. Copyright © by Jennifer Haigh. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating 3.5
( 34 )

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  • Posted August 26, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Sorely Disappointing

    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 in this book and it's not really all that interesting.

    Page 169. Chapter 4 starts here. I hadn't realized it until then, but each chapter has about 4 sub-chapters. They are laid out like a normal chapter, but without a number. This turned me off (even more than I already was).

    Ooh here we go. We are finally talking about Gwen and how her condition affects her and her family. Four (4) pages later, we are done with the explanation. Nice.

    I finished this book, because by then I was invested in it. Sadly.

    This is a story about a family. A family like yours and mine. With our quirky relatives and secrets we all keep in death. It was an easy read, but really, who cares? I feel I could have gone to my neighbors and gotten a good story just as easily.

    There is NOTHING in this book that makes it different from anyone else's life. The Turner Syndrome isn't discussed with any detail. We aren't even told how Gwen dealt with it during her school years. It's just brushed over. We are told about her running away to a man on an island that she barely knows. Show me a woman that hasn't done that at least once in her life. We all fall for the mysterious man at some point. Nothing special there. The brothers each have their secrets, (Show me a family that doesn't) and the parents are divorced, but still speak to each other at time. Just your regular American family.

    Woop-de-doo

    Sorely disappointed.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted June 16, 2009

    Character driven novel

    I was deeply interested in reading this book about a family with its fractures and challenges and strengths within the family. It's always a good sign when I carry a book wherever I go just in case I have a moment to read. This was one of those books for me.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted June 13, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    This is an intriguing character driven tale that looks deeply at how a health condition impacts everyone in a family

    In 1976, the marriage between Paulette and Frank McKotch is teetering on the brink of collapse because he wants sex and lots of it and she doesn't. They are spending the summer together with their three kids at Cape Cod with plans to sell the beach cottage when the vacation ends. However both are stunned to learn their thirteen years old daughter Gwen has been diagnosed with Turner Syndrome, a chromosome deficiency that keeps an adult in the body of a pre- puberty child. Gwen's parents disagree about how to proceed; Frank seeks medical answers while Paulette wants to keep Gwen safe.

    Two decades later, Frank and Paulette long divorced have never married again. Their son Bill lives with his beloved male partner and works as a cardiologist in Manhattan, but hides his sexual preference from his parents. Their youngest child Scott teaches school and is married with two kids. Gwen lives alone working at a museum. On a vacation, she falls in love with her guide. However, Paulette, still protecting Gwen, orders Scott to find his sister and bring her home. His mission forces each of the five McKotches to relook their relationships and their lives.

    This is an intriguing character driven tale that looks deeply at how a health condition impacts everyone in a family; even one that is dysfunctional. The cast drives the story line as each seems real though in many ways the rest of the family besides Gwen show their traits by how they act towards her. The key to this touching tale is the way Jennifer Haigh avoids turning THE CONDITION into a five tissue box soap opera; as readers will feel for Gwen who demands no tears as she is a self sufficient adult.

    Harriet Klausner

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 7, 2008

    Good, Solid Read

    I would just like to correct momof3's entry on this site. She states in her review that the author did not include information on treatment of Turner's Syndrome -- estrogen therapy and growth hormone. In fact, the author does write about this in a chapter in which Frank, the girl's father, is reflecting on the unsuccessful use of each of these treatments on his daughter. I just felt that should be cleared up. I found this to be a good, solid read. The book was well constructed, and I enjoyed the character development, as well as the window into New England living. The descriptions of Paulette's house, for instance, were so well written I felt as though I were seeing it with my own eyes.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 2, 2008

    nice writing

    this one was one smoothly written novel. From the start to the end, I thought it felt like going down the river on a windless and waveless day. One word of caution, this is not one of those books where you read through it quickly. Absorb every bit of it. That's the only way to capture all its wonders...

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted August 11, 2011

    Wasted my time!

    Ugh..I kept thinking it was going to get better, but it never did. I felt there was no story, no beginning or end just blah. Do not waste your time and money

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 26, 2011

    boring

    reading this book is like visiting a stranger and having to listen to them ramble for hours about people you do not know or care about.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted November 2, 2010

    loved this book!

    I couldn't put this book down! I love the story of the family, and the writing. I definately recommend this book.

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  • Posted October 13, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Another Dysfunctional Family Story

    There seems to be part of a parade of books recently published centered around a dysfunctional family that incorporates 9-11 into them. I have somehow managed to read several of them and cannot find the point in them. This one seems a bit above most (Emperors's Children was horrible). The one sentence in the book that seems to sum up the book as a whole is, "pueberty is the one universal human experience". While one of the characters deals with Turner Syndrome, a chromosone disorder that does not allow a female to go through pueberty, the theme of the book seems to be how experiences in pueberty relate to sexuality of an adult. While the premise of the book seems promising, the story is a bit disjointed and relationships seem thrown in at times.

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  • Posted July 20, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Not Interesting

    I couldn't get past the first 60 pages of this book. I noticed a lot of other reviews raved about the characters, but I didn't really find them interesting or relatable. I didn't find that this book focused a lot on Turner's Syndrome, which was why I wanted to read the book. The disease was not the focus of the book, if that's what you're interested in look elsewhere!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 12, 2009

    wonderful book!

    This was a meaty, sensitive, intelligent book, so interesting I could not put it down. Every character was richly drawn, and I cared about each one. The plot never dragged. If you want to sink your teeth into a book, this is the book for you.

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  • Posted January 22, 2009

    I Also Recommend:

    Really Good Book!

    I really enjoyed this book. I loved the characters and really hated for the book to end. This was the first book I had read by Ms. Haigh and I was so taken with her writing that I also bought Mrs. Kimble and Baker Towers. They are both winners! Enjoy this writer!

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  • Posted December 22, 2008

    One of My Favorite Books in the Last Five Years

    I'm astounded to see mixed reviews on this book. It was so amazingly well crafted. The prose was poetic and true and the dynamics in the family fascinating and very believable. I can't say that I agree with a previous reviewer that the use of setting was "fun". In my mind that doesn't even come close to giving the author enough credit. I live in Massahusetts and I couldn't believe how well written her descriptions of Concord, Cambridge and Cape Cod were-- and all the descriptions so relevant in building the characters in her story. Everyone I know who has read this book has loved it! I'll be looking for Jennifer Haigh's other novels.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 19, 2008

    Wouldn't recommend it....

    The book was ok... but it was too long. I assumed it would deal more with having Turner's but it didn't.... I was disappointed.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 19, 2008

    Well-written, absorbing story

    One of the most enjoyable books I've read this summer 'the other was Dreamers of the Day'. If the characters were a tiny bit cliche'd and the use of Turner syndrome was a little gimmicky, the facile language and the family relationships redeemed those issues for me. 'I must also admit the Boston 'sense of place' is fun, having lived there before'

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 26, 2008

    A real page turner!!!

    This is non-stop reading at it's best! I've been waiting all summer to find a book to hold my attention while I await the birth of my first grandchild. Jennifer Haigh is a wonderful storyteller!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 3, 2008

    Misinformation

    It is too bad that the author took a condition such as Turner Syndrome and exploited it for use in her book -- especially since she did it in an inaccurate way. Even at the time this novel was set there were effective treatments for Turner Syndrome such as growth hormone and estrogen replacement so young women could develop normally. What a disappointment -- in this day and age you'd think the publisher would have higher standards. For those who ever receive this diagnosis, don't believe the stereotypes put forth in this book!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 5, 2008

    Well written, but what was the point?

    The title refers to 'the human condition.' Following the McKotches, a seemingly perfect New England family, from 1976 through 2001, readers learn that all is not what is seems. Vacations in Cape Cod, private schools and ivy league educations cover heartwrenching dramas. Money issues, Turners Syndrome (something I didn't know anything about before reading this novel), stoic expectations, drug additictions, homosexuality, denial, lack of communication and faulty conclusions all lead to divorce, loneliness, heartache and complete disconnect. This book was very well written. The author has an amazing gift for description and a vocabulary that excels what is offered by most current novels. That said -- I did not like this book. It was melodramatic and depressing. The conclusion was trite and not enough to redeem this book. There was no hope offered. I'm still questioning: what was the point? Is it about the dangers of unspoken rules (present in every family) or that our fates our determined while we're still children? Is it about growing old with your mistakes? The importance of communication? The value of forgiveness and trust? I really have no idea. All of these themes were present but so subtle I'm left melancholy, thinking of all the other books I could have read instead.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 18, 2009

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted August 3, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

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