The Double Bind

From the opening pages, I was mesmerized by the story of Laurel Estabrook, a young woman who at the beginning of her sophomore year in college is brutally attacked while bicycling. The attack sends her into a dramatic downward spiraling, changing her in ways that concern her friends. She appears to pull herself together and after graduation begins working at a homeless shelter. It is there she encounters Bobbie Crocker, a homeless man, who apparently had been a world-class photographer at one point in his life but dies homeless and without any known family. Laurel becomes obsessed with a box of photographs he left behind and begins piecing together a story of what his life must have been like before he lost control of circumstances. If you've read The Great Gatsby, you will be doubly intrigued as favorite characters from that novel play prominent parts in this one. Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Myrtle and George Wilson, Meyer Wolfsheim, and particularly the Buchanan daughter Pamela and Jay Gatsby himself all figure prominently in Laurel's story. Chris Bohjalian has taken an intriguing premise, juxtaposing the life of a fragile woman alongside her obsession with a homeless man's former life. What he does for readers is extraordinary, giving us a true page-turner that delves into delusions and blurs fiction with reality so effortlessly, that we are stunned as we race toward the heart-stopping finale. From the nostalgic photographs peppered throughout to the psychiatric documentation that periodically jars the reader, this is a mesmerizing novel that will keep you up all night and have you pondering its shocking conclusion long after you have shut the book.

I once heard a fellow novelist call writing "successful schizophrenia"--we create people and worlds in our imagination that don't exist except in our minds; but instead of being medicated, we are paid for it. Although uncountable novels succeed in whisking the reader away on the heels of such fabrications, there are only a few that take away the curtain away from the craft, allowing to peek into the mind of a working novelist as he mixes reality and fantasy to completely new breed. Chris Bohjalian's The Double Bind is not just one of these; it's the most perfect 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. 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. 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.

A surprisingly literate psychological thriller about a social worker, a destitute photographer and the folks who flocked around The Great Gatsby. This book gets better and better as it goes, and evolves into one of the most interesting novels I've read in quite a while. Highly recommended, but be careful not to let anyone tell you too much about it. By all means, avoid all reviews that might give away too much.