THE CONDITION "The Condition" by Jennifer Haigh is a novel which details the relationships within a family which must cope with a middle sister who has Turner's Syndrome. The book begins in 1976 when the McKotch family is spending the summer at Cape Cod. It becomes very noticeable that Gwen's growth and development is far behind that of her much younger cousin. This contrast forces her father, an eminent medical researcher, to think about possibilities. Turner's syndrome is a genetic condition in which a female's second X chromosome is missing or damaged. These children are small in stature and lacking secondary sexual characteristics. Often they develop severe health problems including heart, bone, and kidney ailments. As adults, they appear as a child, rarely taller than four feet and retaining childlike facial features.

This is a novel that prods inquisitively into what makes a family dysfunctional. Are long working hours a widening crack that erodes the family's warmth or are they a reaction to coldness that already exists? Each family member has psychological problems which they then trace to the difficulties facing and coping with Gwen's diagnosis. Gwen herself has the problems that are attributable to her condition. Manifestations of Turner's syndrome are spatial difficulties and nonverbal learning impairment. The father, Frank McKotch, is a hard driving man. His family history is strictly blue collar, people who worked in the mines of Pennsylvania. Through his ability and hard work, he became a Harvard grad, then a research scientist. His marriage to Paulette placed him in the orbit of the Drew family. Their family history is that of New England patricians, but in just a few generations they have managed to fritter away the fortune amassed in the whaling industry. The home on Cape Cod is the only remaining manifestation of their wealth and prominence. Frank was always intimidated by the way Paulette and her brother seemed to project a sense of social superiority to Frank's real world accomplishments. When they were faced with Gwen's problems, the façade of the happy marriage disintegrated. Frank wanted a diagnosis and pursuit of the most up to the minute medical care. Paulette tried to ignore that anything was wrong. This is a novel about the secrets which families hide from themselves and each other. When a great betrayal occurs, the bonds of a family still have the power to both pardon and right wrongs. The novel is an accepting portrayal of a family in pain. [9-7-08]

She met and helped a man named Bobbie Crocker who had a box of photographs which he never let out of his sight. BEDS, the shelter that Laurel worked for, was able to place him in a small residence hotel. A short time later he died and no information was available concerning any surviving relatives. Laurel and the other administrative workers at BEDS became responsible for his final possessions. The director of BEDS examined the photographs and realized that Bobbie had been a gifted photographer. Many of the pictures were of historical icons, mainly taken during the fifties and the sixties. The director of the homeless shelter asks Laurel, herself a photographer, to create a display of Bobbie's photographs. The show would benefit the shelter while illustrating the way homeless individuals hoard a few things that connect them to their past lives. While Laurel works on the show, she focuses on who Bobbie was and who are some of the subjects in the photographs. Is one picture Gatsby's home and are two children Daisy Buchanan's son and daughter? Is it possible the child was Bobbie? Laurel attempts to interview Daisy's daughter who is now a ruthless and wealthy old woman.

This is a novel that focuses on the homeless. Yes, they are often in that state due to alcoholism or mental illness, but they still deserve some respect and attention from society. At some point in their lives they may have made great contributions. If their current state only teaches some of us compassion, that is a noble function. The novel does have an extremely surprising ending, illustrating the double bind, the ways our past influences our present. The present is also a recording and sometimes a rewriting of the past. [9-14-08]

The Saffron Kitchen "The Saffron Kitchen" by Yasmin Crowther is a depiction of how close a mother and a daughter can be and still keep secrets from each other. There is a secret that has shadowed Maryam Mazur all during her life in England. She was sent by her family away from an idyllic country village in Iran, first to Tehran, then to London. She married a gentle Englishman, Edward, and lived with him in an attractive London suburb. Their daughter Sara never understood her mother's rages and sad, bitter moods. Her mother's private room in the house is the turquoise room, painted a brilliant color and filled with strange objects. There are knotted bits of grass, strangely shaped stones, and piles of red sand.

Maryam left her village at the beginning of the Iranian revolution. Her father had been a general in the Shah's army, so she had come from a privileged family. Maryam had always loved the summers which she spent in Mazareh, a rural village wholly owned by her family. When the revolution began and there was a disturbance in the village, Maryam was separated from her family and spent an innocent night with Ari, a family servant. At that time, in that culture, this was a serious offence. Although Maryam was a well loved daughter, still her father felt that she must be punished because even the appearance of any immorality brings shame upon the family. Maryam had dreamed of living a more liberated life than that of a typical Muslim female, but she had not expected that exile would be the way she would be liberated.

Maryam's English life ignores her past in many ways. Some Iranian customs are still celebrated and some food follows family recipes, but the close contact is lost. Sara's life straddles the two cultures and she does not closely identify with either. Then a newly married and pregnant Sara has a dramatic confrontation with her mother and a cousin that causes a miscarriage. This tragedy precipitates a need in Maryam to return to her past. This is when these secrets which she has kept from her family begin to be revealed. All the difficulties of unhealed scars from the past are exposed. The ways that the mother-daughter bond must be strengthened by a full disclosure of the past are the core of this novel. The novel is a tribute to the ways that sights, sounds, and smells from the past pull us home. [9-21-08]

Dear American Airlines Almost all of us have been stranded in an airport for a prolonged time and do know that our thoughts can take us on a very long journey when there is nothing to do and no interruptions to our introspection. Such is the situation in "Dear American Airlines" by Jonathan Miles. He is on his way to the wedding of his estranged daughter when a flight cancellation leaves him sitting at the airport. The novel takes the form of a protest letter which Benjamin Ford pens to American Airlines in which he describes how important it is to him to make his connecting flight taking him out of O'Hare to his daughter's wedding in California.

This short novel is far too long to be an effective complaint letter, but it certainly is a story that is bitter, infuriating, and funny. Benjamin Ford exposes himself both as a person with uplifting dreams and goals and as an intoxicated jerk. His major excuse for his misled life is that he is a poet. When he describes his childhood in New Orleans as the only child of a manic-depressive mother and a Polish immigrant, you are left to wonder that he matured as normally as he did. The marriage to Stella, which produced his daughter, Stella, ended mainly because of his drinking. This is the voice of a character which few of us would want to consider a friend. He is narcissistic, unreliable, selfish, and just simply unpleasant. He describes the ways he failed in his marriage, other interpersonal relationships, and in his career. The narrative has the fascination of watching a train wreck. The fictional letter is a declaration of the way Benjamin Ford hopes to make reparation to his daughter for ignoring her for all of her life. He was one of those absent fathers who did not send child support, didn't call on birthdays, and wasn't there for Christmas. As he describes the past, the fault is mainly that of his ex-wife and her family. When you follow his prose, the fault is all his own. He had achieved minor success with his poetry as a young man, but for his middle years he lived on his past reputation. Thanks to the knowledge of Polish he gained from his father, he became a translator. The book he is working on provides him with some hope for his own miserable life. Some humor even lurks in this mostly bitter tale. [9-28-08]