#48 – The Double Bind

Wow, this book threw me for a loop. There are so many reasons why I appreciate Chris Bojhalian’s writing, in a way, he’s like an old-school moralist, not that he preaches, but that each of his novels have a way of showing you, like a good philosophy teacher, the limitations of your own thought. The Double Bind is no different, and with every novel, Bojhalian’s skill as a novelist seems to improve, and this book is on par with my very favourite of his, The Buffalo Soldier.

The novel’s protagonist, Laurel Estabrook, is attacked while riding her bike down an abandoned logging road in Vermont. As she copes with the tragedy, we’re pulled further and further into her world. We see her become obsessed with the photographs of Bobbie Crocker, a homeless man she helped at the shelter where she works, as she uncovers a world of secrets around the story of Jay Gastby.

I don’t want to say much more than that because to give anything away with this novel would be to ruin it, for like the Lippman, the ending really makes the entire reading experience. Let me just suffice it to say that not everything is as it seems, and that’s the true quality in the writing of this novel, Bojhalian’s skill in exploring or, rather, plunging the depths of the young woman’s despair over her attack.

See how it was hard to get any work done this week? The reading was just so good.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: It’s quite fitting, again, that I read a lot of this book on the old-school psychiatrist’s chair we have in the cottage. The book is sitting upon it on an old plaid blanket that I adore—even though it’s the itchy kind. And can I say that the cover of my ARC is way, way better than the cover of the finished book? It’s so blah, that other cover, compared to the vibrant images on the advance reader.