Rövid leírás:
Devastated by their daughter’s diagnosis with Turner’s syndrome, a genetic disorder that prevents her from physically aging past childhood, the McKotches find her difficulties further challenged years later when, well into her thirties but still resembling a young girl, their daughter falls in love. 150,000 first printing. Reprint.
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Hosszú leírás:
THE CONDITION explores one turbulent year in the lives of the McKotches, a New England family in extremis. Paulette and Frank McKotch, long divorced, hide a mountain of old grievances from their three adult children, who are busy with crises of their own. Billy, the eldest, is a successful Manhattan cardiologist living a double life. Scott, the youngest, has made an endless series of wrong turns. And Gwen, the daughter, lives a hermitic life far away from her parents. The family attributes her reclusive temperament to her Turners syndrome, a chromosomal disorder that has left her with the stature and physical maturity of an eleven year-old child. From the day it was diagnosed, Gwens condition has caused explosive disagreement between her parents. Frank is fascinated by the clinical manifestations of Turners – a scientific interest that horrifies Paulette, who sees Gwens condition as nothing short of calamity. As Christmas 1997 approaches, Frank, a prominent medical researcher, is on the brink of a big discovery when an old rival reappears. Billys secret life implodes, and Scott becomes obsessed with roads not taken. And Gwen, in her thirties, falls in love for the first time, a development the whole family views with alarm. HE CONDITION looks at the power of science and its profound limitations, the determining reality of biology and the power of individual will. Mostly, though, it is a story about parents and children and siblings: the people we love but didnt choose – and in many cases, wouldnt have; the complex and bewildering web of loyalties and resentments that takes a lifetime to form.
