PEN/Hemingway Award winner Haigh's third novel (Baker Towers, 2005,
etc.) focuses on the now disconnected members of a once close-knit
New England family.The summer of 1976 is the last Paulette and
Frank McKotch and their three children will spend together as a
family at her parents' Cape Cod cottage before the house is sold
and Frank and Paulette are divorced. Cold but needy Paulette, who
dropped out of Wellesley to marry, and warm but self-centered
Frank, a scientist and professor at MIT, are sexually incompatible
- he wants more and she wants less. Their already shaky marriage
falls apart when their 13-year-old daughter Gwen is diagnosed with
a chromosome deficiency that keeps her from developing physically
in puberty; Frank wants to pursue medical solutions while Paulette
wants to protect Gwen from pain. Cut ahead 20 years to the
mid-'90s. Frank and Paulette have never remarried. Both are
painfully lonely. Bill, their oldest son, has become a cardiologist
in Manhattan. He is in a genuinely loving relationship with another
man, but he keeps his sexuality a secret from his parents, and
completely avoids Frank, who always favored him. Youngest son
Scott, the family black sheep, has fallen into marriage with a
woman whose coarseness is portrayed almost as a moral deficiency.
At 30, teaching at a mediocre private school, he barely supports
her and their two children. Although he lives in nearby
Connecticut, he too rarely sees his parents or siblings. At 34,
Gwen still has a child's body. She lives a lonely life working in a
museum. On a vacation in the Caribbean, Gwen falls in love with her
guide. Paulette, a conventional snob and overly protective mother,
sends Scott to find Gwen, setting in motion a chain of reactions
that ultimately force each of the McKotches to reexamine their
relationships with each other and with themselves.After the lovely
opening, filled with genuine insight and touching lyricism, Haigh
overly orchestrates her characters' lives. (Kirkus Reviews)
A year in the life of the members of the divided McKotch family,
revealing their secrets and their conflicts The house by the sea
held sepia-tinted family memories tight within its walls. Once a
year it was dusted down, its windows flung open, the sound of
laughter echoed throughout its rooms; this was the rhythm of family
life. All that is about to change. When Gwen, the youngest child,
is diagnosed with Turner's Syndrome, the family knows that her body
will never grow to adulthood. Frank, her scientist father, is
fascinated by the disease, while Paulette her mother is horrified.
As they struggle to cope with the ramifications of Gwen's illness,
her parents see the cracks within their marriage widen irreparably.
Equally affected are their sons; one a successful lawyer in denial
about who he is, the other whose search for himself and his need
for his parents' approval has only resulted in a series of dead
ends. Jennifer Haigh paints a brilliant portrait of a family idyll
and its seemingly inevitable and painful disintegration in this
stunning and thought-provoking novel.
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