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Buy The Double Bind: A Novel by Chris Bohjalian available and for sale on Brightsurf
| View Larger Image | The Double Bind: A Novel
by Chris Bohjalian
| | List Price: | $25.00 | | Price: | $16.50 | | You Save: | $8.50 (34%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 30043 | | Studio: | Shaye Areheart Books | | | Binding: | Hardcover | | Number Of Pages: | 384 | | Publication Date: | February 13, 2007 | | Publisher: | Shaye Areheart Books |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
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 (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 213 reviews)
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Will keep you guessing until the last chapter 
Your heart will go out to Laurel. The energy that she uses to find the truth is admirable and so sad when the truth is finally revealed.
July 08, 2008 | |
Just couldn't finish it. 
I am an avid fan of Bohjalian. However, I could not get through more than 158 pages of The Double Bind. Despite having read and thoroughly enjoyed The Great Gatsby, the constant allusions to the characters of this classic, combined with other myriad flashbacks, left me constantly wondering where the author was going and what details were "important." A friend who did finish the novel told me the ending. I'm glad I chose to stop when I did. I think I would have missed my lost evenings.
July 01, 2008 | |
Well written but unnecessarily upsetting 
Do not read this review if you don't want information about the ending.
I enjoyed this book quite a bit as I have his previous books. However, I felt that the author created an unnecessarily gruesome twist at the end that spoiled the rest of the book for me. If you are someone who is sensitive to images of attack then you may want to stay away from this book.
June 29, 2008 | |
Not his best 
I was disappointed in this book as I have enjoyed most of Chris Bohjalian's works. I really had a hard time getting into the story. The plot was an interesting concept, but the delivery was clumsy. I think this story would have worked better in the first person, I won't say anymore or it would spoil the ending.
June 26, 2008 | |
The Double Bind
"Having lived and taught in Barnard and Woodstock, VT it was nice to travel around the state with Laurel as she tried to unravel her mystery in "Double Bind." Bohjalian's characters are strong, every day people and the plots well woven. "Buffalo Soldier" is still my number one favorite, but luckily I still have more of you to read. Thanks for doing what you do so well."
June 16, 2008 | |
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