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sheilabookworm3369's review against another edition
4.0
A family drama with strong characters. The plot is twisty and sometimes will take you back into the far or near past. The far past visits were few, thank goodness, but one or two were long (and ultimately skimmable). The differing personalities in the family made up for any delays due to flashbacks, and will probably stick in my head for a good while.
gertyp's review against another edition
I'm not going to finish this. At least not now. It's not grabbing my attention, I'm not enjoying it and I have too many other books to read!
mashockn's review against another edition
2.0
Slow read for me. It started off well; had me hooked, but then just fell about 100 pages in. The characters weren't developed well and I didn't care what happened to them at all. They were very unlikeable. The ending was abrupt for how much detail had gone into other areas of the book.
rkuschmider's review against another edition
3.0
Why is it that so many books that literary awards are just stories of people who are bad at life? In this story, we have a whole family incapable of human connection. They’re rich and white so they can bumble around without too many negative consequences. But they also don’t ever get any better at being human.
lauraportalupi's review against another edition
4.0
My favorite part of this book was how Haigh so skillfully portrayed each character’s flaws and assets. As in real life, everyone is a mash up of good and bad, right and wrong. So often the same trait can be interpreted positively or negatively – it’s all in the eye of the beholder. I was impressed with how easily I sympathized with or vilified the same character, depending on the narrator whose perspective I was hearing.
robinsbooks's review against another edition
5.0
I really liked this book about an old school New England family torn apart by the medical diagnosis of the pre-teen daughter, Gwen. The book starts in the 70s when the family is vacationing at the shore and it is noticed that Gwen doesn't seem to be as physically mature as her cousin and eventually it is determined that she has Turner's syndrome, which meeans she will not grow past her pre-pubsecent body. The rest of the story takes place 20 years later and how this diagnosis affected (and is still affecting) the family is told from the viewpoints of all of the family members. This is an interesting and well-told story of family dynamics and would be a good bet for discussion groups.
http://www.salemlibrary.org
http://www.salemlibrary.org
perry417's review against another edition
3.0
Took me quite a while to get into this book. At one point, it occurred to me that reading this was like waiting for a pot of water to boil. You know how the water is hot but the bubbles just kind of sit there at the bottom, and you wait and wait for a real boil? I sort of felt this way. This had all the components of a book I love -- family drama, multiple perspectives, adult children coping with their childhood issues --and by the end the puzzle pieces of how and why Gwen's medical condition affected the rest of the family all fell into place, to the point where I am still thinking about each of the brothers. Heavy on character development, light on plot, which is fine and good because it was very well-written. But, to me, it just took a long time to get to a boil.
feminartist's review against another edition
2.0
This book was a real beating to finish. The synopsis made it very appealing, but honestly I had to force myself to finish it. It even had a strong start and I was engaged and invested in the characters within just a few pages. The problem is, it never really went anywhere. There was no real arc to the story at all, and while the characters did develop, they did so SLOWLY and without holding my interest at all.
Overall, very disappointing.
Overall, very disappointing.
lisagray68's review against another edition
3.0
A book about a girl with Turner's syndrome and what it does to their family. A horrible marriage, a gay brother, a loser brother - we've got it all here, folks!! I never considered not finishing it, it wasn't that. An engaging story and the writing was well done. It's not a book I'll think about long after, though. In fact, I had to go back and read the reviews on Amazon to remember what it was about, and I just read it a month ago!
maryrobinson's review against another edition
3.0
A well-written family drama set in New England centering on a daughter with a genetic condition that prevents her from developing into an adult. Story follows the young family, with the Mother and Father torn apart by different reactions to the daughter’s condition.