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A psychological novel about obsession from the New York Times bestselling author of Before you Know Kindness.
Based on a true story. Laurel works at a homeless shelter, where she meets a man named Bobbie Crocker. Only recently homeless, he has a history of mental illness and a box of photographs he won't let anyone see. When he dies suddenly, Laurel opens the box to discover that he was once a successful photographer for the rich and famous. As Laurel searches deeper into Bobbie's former life she finds that the photographs expose a deeply hidden family secret.
The idea of the invented self hovers over Gatsby. Jay Gatsby, we remember, begins an unpromising life as James Gatz and is murdered for a crime he does not commit. Bohjalian, too, is interested in the gray area between hope and delusion, in how people are shaped by the events of their lives and the efforts they make to hold the self inviolable against fate and harm. As Nick Carraway concludes, the past is powerfully present in the future, and Laurel's investigations into Bobbie Crocker's life lead her inevitably into her own history. Some readers may reach the end and feel blindsided rather than enlightened, but The Double Bind describes just how circuitous that inescapable journey can be.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Tiffany Creech
reviewed The Double Bind on April 26, 2008
The Double Bind
Offensively bad. Poorly written and/or poorly edited -- likely both -- oh dear crap, it was awful. Overwritten. Stupid. Carelessly written. Used the word "dowager" at least five hundred times -- so much that I laughed out loud and wished I'd made a drinking game of it. And it was UNNECESSARY. Who edited this? Who allowed "epoxied" to stand in for "glued" three times on three consecutive pages in totally needless contexts? Who greenlighted "dowager" so many damn times? Who decided to refer to Laurel as "the social worker" in such a manner that it became absurdly confusing as to who THE HELL he was referring to?
No, really: I want to know who edited this. Has Chris Bohjalian reached such great heights that he doesn't NEED an editor? Because someone should tell him that he does. Someone should also have told him that he wrote better books than this in the past, and that maybe he should have trashed it and started over again at the drawing board.
The plot -- if you can call it that -- was so incredibly inane, the character(s) so unlikable, that I honestly didn't give a rip about what was happening. I don't even care enough to summarize it for you, because it would be laughable, and explains why the book description didn't REMOTELY match what the story was about. Like, at all.
I slogged forward because I felt an obligation to make it through to the "twist" -- which I figured out at a stupidly early time, such was the sad transparency of what he'd written -- the whole time thinking, this better be one hell of a twist (perhaps one that did my laundry for me and served me crackers and cheese in bed) for me to feel AT ALL decent about having suffered through this piece of utter crap. (DOWAGER. JESUS CHRIST HE SAID IT A THOUSAND TIMES. EPOXIED. I EPOXIED MY FIST TO MY FACE OUT OF FRUSTRATION ABOUT THE DOWAGER USAGE. HOW IS THAT, CHRIS? SOUND GOOD? BECAUSE I DID.)
I am so distraught that I slogged through this that I ... I can't even articulate it without being a jerk, as I just finished it.
RUN. RUN AWAY. Awful. Awful awful awful.
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