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A review by afterwhat
The Condition by Jennifer Haigh
2.0
I don't know. I'm not a big fan of literary fiction, really, and when it's that specific type of literary fiction where nothing happens except like, ordinary people living ordinary lives, I'm even less of a fan. I like character development and all, but I do need some plot, The Condition didn't have much of it. I liked the setting, and I was fairly invested in Billy's story, pretty unsurprisingly, but I didn't much care about the parents, and I really didn't care about Gwen, who I thought when I added the book to my TBR list, that the book was going to be mostly about.
It was okay. I dug the--there was something sort of We Were the Mulvaneys about it, the way that it took one thing about one family member and looked at how that one thing changed the course of the lives of the entire family. But in this book, it was just that the family blamed the one thing for the ways they screwed themselves over, whereas in Oates' book, the incident had more of a genuine effect. Also, We Were the Mulvaneys is freaking awesome and just wrecked me emotionally, and this book didn't even come close. But I guess I liked what it tried to do?
It was okay.
It was okay. I dug the--there was something sort of We Were the Mulvaneys about it, the way that it took one thing about one family member and looked at how that one thing changed the course of the lives of the entire family. But in this book, it was just that the family blamed the one thing for the ways they screwed themselves over, whereas in Oates' book, the incident had more of a genuine effect. Also, We Were the Mulvaneys is freaking awesome and just wrecked me emotionally, and this book didn't even come close. But I guess I liked what it tried to do?
It was okay.