The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian – the literary pleasure of being fooled

Whilst mountain biking on the back roads of Vermont, college sophomore Laurel Estabrook is attacked. Although left for dead, she survives, but her life is changed forever. Six years later, Laurel still struggles with her fears as a result of the assault. She is more withdrawn, but takes a job at a homeless shelter where she meets Bobby Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs he won’t let anyone see. When Bobby dies, Laurel sorts through the box and is amazed to find that Bobby had once been a successful celebrity photographer. Her fascination with his former life begins to merge into obsession, especially when, hidden in his collection, she finds a photograph of a girl on a bike, on a lonely Vermont back road – a picture Laurel believes is her, taken six years ago, only moments before the attack …

I must admit that I’ve had this book in my collection for about two years or so and have never got round to reading it. Partly because it was recommended to me by someone in a bookshop and up until now whenever anyone recommends a book to me I’ve always ended up hating it with a vengeance, and partly because my “genre box brain” read the blurb, said the words run-of-the-mill crime drama and nothing special, and then left it lurking at the bottom of my huge reading pile.

Well, more fool me. Because this is definitely not run-of-the-mill crime reading, in any sense of the word, and it packs a hell of a lot more into it, and more subtly, than I was ever expecting. I have to say from the outset that it’s going to be very difficult to write any sort of review on this book that will make sense, as The Double Bind is full of delicious literary tricks that it would be an utter shame to reveal in their entirety and thus mar your potential reading pleasure. So I have tried my utmost to keep spoilers out, but I apologise if any have slipped in unintentionally.

The prologue of the novel is incredibly gripping as we are plunged right into the near-rape scene that lights the touch-paper of the whole plot. So, yes, there is a level of contained violence that is, of necessity, shocking, and this same violence is also seen indirectly towards the end of the novel but in a different context.

Our sympathies are therefore very much with Laurel and that hook keeps you hanging on in at that stage, although I did find that the levels of description concerning Laurel’s life now, six years later, and her work in the homeless centre did seem excessively detailed. As a result it came as something of a relief when the plot widened out to include points of view from her colleagues and friends. I particularly liked the refreshing down-to-earth Talia, whom Laurel shares a flat with, and who works with the church.

There’s also a very interesting facet of this novel which slowly dawned on me, partly because I’m not the brightest lamp in the lamp-box by a long chalk, and partly because I do have trouble remembering plots and character names even of classic books and so things that will probably be obvious to some simply pass me by. All this preamble leads me to the fact that the author uses key characters from The Great Gatsby as real people involved in Laurel’s story and the wider plot in general. So Daisy Buchanan, her husband and Gatsby herself from that classic novel all have their place here in events that have happened in the past a couple of generations back from where Laurel is now. In fact, Daisy’s daughter, Pamela, who may or may not be the unfortunate Bobby’s sister, becomes an important driver in the book as she is determined to take Bobby’s photographs back from Laurel in order to keep from her the secrets they hold. At first this disturbed me and I became irritated by it, but then I came to admire its sheer pizzazz and the extra layer it adds to this story.

I also enjoyed the very subtle way that Laurel’s obsession with these photographs gradually spirals out of control so that the “normal” existence she’s tried to hold on to after her assault six years previously begins to slip from her grasp. She loses touch with her friends and support networks, and starts to become borderline homeless herself in her determination to uncover the secrets of Bobby’s life. As the tension begins to build, there are one or two scenes where some clumsiness seems to creep into the way the plot works, such as the sudden appearance of Pamela’s lawyer, the apparent scene of robbery in Laurel’s home, and the way she so easily finds some of the information she needs via Bobby’s old church friends. But this is also another way of weaving together the layers of the story, from the side that Laurel by necessity cannot see, so their logic is revealed at the end of the novel in perfectly acceptable fashion.

Indeed, the final scenes are devastatingly good, particularly where Laurel forces herself to meet, in a controlled context, one of the men responsible for her assault and who is now in prison. From that moment on, everything starts to fall beautifully into place, and the clues the author has so cleverly given us during the book are seen in an entirely different light. So much so that I have to say The Double Bind has been one of the most exciting, clever, understated and simply gut-punchingly great books that I’ve read in a long, long time. It had me guessing, it had me deeply fooled, it made me think about my own reality and I’m thinking about it still. More please.

The Double Bind, Pocket Books 2008, ISBN: 978-1-84739-193-3

[Anne occasionally enjoys being outclassed by a master of the trade but still likes to set some small value on her own literary crime shenanigans.]

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