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| The Double Bind: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Chris Bohjalian
Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $0.07
You Save: $24.93 (100%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $0.07
Avg. Customer Rating:  (231 reviews)
Sales Rank: 54634
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.7
ISBN: 1400047463
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781400047468
ASIN: 1400047463
Publication Date: February 13, 2007
Release Date: February 13, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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 Review
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 226 more reviews...
 Double Bind November 16, 2008
I was very satisfied with the condition of the book and the promptness in which it was received. I would definitely use this company again. Last time I gave them a very good review, but inadvertantly chose the wrong star. I hope this does not count against them because it was an excellent experience. Thanks MR
 Such potential, but ultimately a rip-off November 15, 2008
BEWARE OF "SPOILER" ... BUT THEN AGAIN, IT MAY SAVE YOU TIME. The 3 stars are for wrapping the actual photos of "Soupy" Campbell into the story. They're for the intriguing link with The Great Gatsby. They're for a compelling story with multiple layers of meaning. This could have been a great book earning 5 stars. Instead, however, it turns out that the author was dishonest with his readers. I feel insulted and cheated, robbed of my time and emotional investment in the book. There are literary devices that could have made this work. However, the author took the easy way out. As a result, upon completing the book, and, I would venture, even upon rereading it (although I haven't wasted my time), it is impossible to tell what was "real" and what was imagined by the main character. There are no dividing lines or hints such as narrator point of view or what characters were present in the scenes. The imaginary scenes turn out to have been so pervasive, that we are left without knowing what, if anything, was real. Maybe that's the point, so I give it these generous 3 stars. But I wish the author worked a little harder and demonstrated some integrity. I feel betrayed and robbed.
Excellent October 18, 2008
Read this book, and you may want to read it again. This story flows without a gap. If you skip ahead while you read this book, you will spoil it for yourself. While it is not what I would call a mystery, you will find yourself discovering clues for weeks after finishing the book.
 Gatsby on the Rocks with a Twist September 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
After 24 years of reading and hundreds of books, I am still a sucker for the plot twist. All is not as it seems in this novel where "The Great Gatsby" treads lightly over that semi-permeable line between fiction and reality. Bohjalian is an incredibly talented writer, one who had me grasping at straws outside the realm of "willing suspension of disbelief," and convincing myself I knew what was true and what was going to happen.
Looking back, I cannot believe I fell for the misdirection, but it makes me want to reread the novel with a new perspective. I gave this reading four stars because for some reason the story did not pull me in until near the end, but a second reading might yield different results. I would recommend this novel, especially for lovers of Gatsby, but see it through to the final page because I assure you it's worth it!
Whose Reality is Real? September 22, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Author Chris Bohjalian subtley draws the reader into the world of the mentally ill in the masterfully crafted The Double Bind. The interweaving of characters, setting, and plot elements from F. Scott Fitzgerald's American classic The Great Gatsby both intrigue the reader and hint at the schizophrenic world which the main character Lauren is creating as she is forced to confront the trauma of a brutal attack in her past. Bohjalian's novel keeps the reader on edge, wondering himself what is real and what is imagined. At the same time Bohjalian's characters are a testament to the human will to survive, both physically and emotionally, in the most difficult of circumstances.
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