Selected Product:
| The Double Bind: A Novel
Abridged, Au
Edition: Abridged
Author: Chris Bohjalian
Publisher: RH Audio
Release Date: 2008-02-12
ISBN-10: 0739365754
ISBN-13: 9780739365755
List Price: $14.99
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
Double Bind
| Customer Rating: | | 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
| Customer Rating: | | 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
| Customer Rating: | | 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
| Customer Rating: | 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?
| Customer Rating: | | 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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