The Double Bind: A Novel | 
|  | | | Title: | The Double Bind: A Novel | | Author: | Chris Bohjalian | | Publisher: | Shaye Areheart Books | | Type: | Book / Hardcover | | Publication Date: | 13 February, 2007 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 1400047463 / 9781400047468 | | List Price: | $25.00 | | You Save: | $8.50 | | Amazon Price: | $16.50 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
Throughout his career, Chris Bohjalian has earned a reputation for writing novels that examine some of the most important issues of our time. With Midwives, he explored the literal and metaphoric place of birth in our culture. In The Buffalo Soldier, he introduced us to one of contemporary literature’s most beloved foster children. And in Before You Know Kindness, he plumbed animal rights, gun control, and what it means to be a parent.
Chris Bohjalian’s riveting fiction keeps us awake deep into the night. As The New York Times has said, “Few writers can manipulate a plot with Bohjalian’s grace and power.” Now he is back with an ambitious new novel that travels between Jay Gatsby’s Long Island and rural New England, between the Roaring Twenties and the twenty-first century.
When college sophomore Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont’s back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography and begins to work at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he won’t let anyone see. When Bobbie dies suddenly, Laurel discovers that he was telling the truth: before he was homeless, Bobbie Crocker was a successful photographer who had indeed worked with such legends as Chuck Berry, Robert Frost, and Eartha Kitt.
As Laurel’s fascination with Bobbie’s former life begins to merge into obsession, she becomes convinced that some of his photographs reveal a deeply hidden, dark family secret. Her search for the truth will lead her further from her old life—and into a cat-and-mouse game with pursuers who claim they want to save her.
In this spellbinding literary thriller, rich with complex and compelling characters—including Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan—Chris Bohjalian takes readers on his most intriguing, most haunting, and most unforgettable journey yet.
Amazon.com
Best known for the provocative and powerful novel, Midwives (an Oprah Book Club® Selection), Chris Bohjalian writes beautiful and riveting fiction featuring what the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed "ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances behaving with grace and dignity." In his new novel, The Double Bind, a literary thriller with references to (and including characters from) The Great Gatsby, Bohjalian takes readers on a haunting journey through one woman's obsession with uncovering a dark secret. We think Bohjalian fans will be thrilled with this compelling and unforgettable read, but just to be sure, we asked bestselling author Jodi Picoult to read The Double Bind and give us her take. Check out her review below. --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Jodi Picoult
 From the provocative and gut-wrenching The Pact, to the brilliant genre-bending The Tenth Circle, to her latest novel about a high school shooting Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult's riveting novels center on family and relationships, and bring to light questions and issues that remain with a reader long after the last page is turned.
I once heard a fellow novelist call writing "successful schizophrenia"--we invent people and worlds that don't exist; but instead of being medicated, we are paid for it. Although countless novels succeed in whisking the reader away on the heels of such fabrications, there are very few that pull the curtain away from the craft, allowing us inside the mind of a working novelist as he combines reality and fantasy. Chris Bohjalian's The Double Bind is not just one of these; it's the finest example I've ever read of a book that tips its hat to both the beauty of the literary creation, as well as the magical act of creating. Fact and fiction become indistinguishable in The Double Bind: The story centers on Laurel Estabrook, a young social worker and survivor of a near-rape, who stumbles across photographs taken by a formerly homeless client and tries to understand how a man who'd taken snapshots of celebrities in the 50s and 60s might have wound up on the streets. However, an author's note tells us that Bohjalian conceived this book after being shown a batch of old photographs taken by a once-homeless man; and the actual photos of Bob "Soupy" Campbell are peppered throughout the text. In another neat twist, Bohjalian's resurrects details from The Great Gatsby, which become "real" in the context of his own novel--Laurel lives in West Egg; part of her hunt for her photographer's past involves meeting with the descendants of Daisy and Tom Buchanan. As a writer who counts The Great Gatsby as one of the books that changed her life, this inclusion was both startling and remarkable for me. Who doesn't want one's favorite characters to come to life--even if it's only within the constraints of another fictional work? But Bohjalian chose his text wisely: no discussion of The Great Gatsby is complete without alluding to missed opportunities and unreliable sources--critical elements in Laurel's quest. And therein lies Bohjalian's true double bind: all stories--even the ones we tell ourselves--are subject to our own interpretation, and to the degree we can make others believe them. The Double Bind may flirt with the classics, but it's not your father's stuffy old tome: it's the sort of book you want to read in one sitting, and it packs a twist at the end that will leave you speechless. It also, worthily, spotlights the cause of homelessness in a way that isn't preachy, but honest and explanatory. Ultimately, what Bohjalian's done is offer his lucky readers another reminder of why he's such an extraordinary author: by creating characters that become so real we lose the distinction between truth and embellishment; by reminding us that the story of any life--whether fictional, functional, or marginal--is one to be savored. --Jodi Picoult
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Customer Reviews:
• Read And Discuss 07 May, 2008
This is a book that I found increasingly difficult to put down. I had to reread it shortly upon finishing it (I reread _The Great Gatsby_ in between) and I had to loan it to a book friend so we could discuss it as soon as possible. I do not want to give away too much. If you have enjoyed other novels of Chris Bohjalian, I would definitely get this one. This book gave me quite an emotional punch, and I felt tied to Laurel for days - still do, in a way, even though I've never had anyone try to attack me in the woods. This book made me want to call up my AP English teacher and thank her for teaching us _The Great Gatsby_ in the first place. (I have no issue with any poetic license Bohjalian took with _The Great Gatsby._) _The Double Bind_ works on many levels. In my opinion, having more life experience and a good level of maturity works to your advantage when reading this book because it really brings you inside the head of a character who is "fragile" after an experience that occurred when she was 19 years old. If you are like me and empathize easily with Bohjalian's characters, beware that this is an intense read. In my opinion, it is worth it -- especially if you have someone to discuss it with!!!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2XKCOQG6202OW
• A Good Read With An Unsatisfying Resolution 04 May, 2008
I had not read Chris Bohjalian's work, and picked up an audio download of The Double Bind (Vintage Contemporaries). That may NOT have been the perfect choice since it's so much harder to flip back, and this book demanded it. However, the reading by Susan Denaker was effective and the recording well-produced.
This book is difficult to review without spilling secrets, an important consideration in a story where clues are laid down all the way through and the big surprise is at the end. The main character, Laurel, had been viciously attacked while biking on a Vermont country road and her emotional recovery from that awful experience is by no means complete. She is a social worker at an agency for the homeless in Burlington, Vermont, and becomes obsessed with the photographs left behind by a deceased client. Her pursuit of the homeless photographer's story takes her back and forth from Vermont to her childhood home on Long Island.
The story is woven through with the fictional characters from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, discussed as though they had really existed; the author refers to this slice of 1920s society as "hollow, sullen and morally insolvent." The reader must hold this thread along with the strands of Laurel's stories, present and past, and the photographer's history. Together these strands weave a seemingly complex knot, which disappears like Houdini's Vanishing Knot with the final revelations of the book.
I love a psychologically complex story with a surprise ending. When it's well done, the reader may reconsider the plot elements and leave the book with a new appreciation for the author's skill. In The Double Bind Bohjalian laid his smoke screen down too well, obscuring the "truth" of the book. Multi-layering is a good thing in fiction - in this case fiction posing as fiction posing as reality - but readers may wish that Bohjalian had fit the layers together more carefully.
I would love to give the book more than three stars because of the interesting theme and smooth prose style; but measured against what he could have given us, this book falls short in the plotting details. I'll certainly read more of this author's work.
Linda Bulger, 2008
- Reviewed by customer ID: AKR4DH6WLF6GG
• Not Getting Better 11 May, 2008
Having tried to read several of his earlier books I approached this one only after it was recommended by a friend who reads a mix of literary fiction and beach books. While I prefer literary fiction I can read the other stuff if it has a compelling yarn. For these reasons, and the fact that I had lived in Underhill, Vermont a few years ago, I decided to give it a go. Don't bother. In a word: vacuous. The writing is crude, the yarn slack. He's not been "Orah'ed" for nothing.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1K9MVIP40VKTR
• The Double Bind By Chris Bohjalian 05 May, 2008
This is a book whose characters stayed in my mind for a long time after I read it (and re-read it). It is engrossing, at times strange and enigmatic, and beautifully and compassionately written. I can't remember reading a novel where I really cared and thought about the character so intensely, for so long. Highly recommended!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A293IKKJBO35AY
• Good Read 29 April, 2008
This one keeps you guessing until the end - a good read with interesting character development. I also liked the links to Gatsby, etc. - very cleverly done. This is not a fast-moving book, but one that tells a good story about people the author makes you care about.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2DTOI06RL97KO
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