#31 - The Double Bind

This was an interesting book and it was definitely different from anything else that I've read. Overall, I did enjoy it and rated it a 3 in my Shelfari review. I would have given it a higher rating, but I had a little trouble getting into the book early on and I managed to figure everything out way before the end. Here is a synopsis copied from Barnes and Noble:

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 fromher 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.

My progress for the 100 Book Challenge follows:

1. An Idiot Girl's Christmas - Laurie Notaro - 142 pages
2. The Missing - Chris Mooney - 360 pages
3. All the Numbers - Judy Merrill Larsen - 269 pages
4. The Quickie - James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge - 274 pages
5. The Darkest Evening of the Year - Dean Koontz - 354 pages
6. Plea of Insanity - Jilliane Hoffman - 598 pages
7. When Madeline Was Young - Jane Hamilton - 274 pages
8. Sunshine - Robin McKinley - 405 pages
9. Spying in High Heels - Gemma Halliday - 318 pages
10. I Am Legend - Richard Matheson - 312 pages
11. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer - 563 pages
12. Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City - Kirsten Miller - 380 pages
13. The Husband - Dean Koontz - 415 pages
14. Kiki Strike: The Empress's Tomb - Kirsten Miller - 369 pages
15. Plum Lucky - Janet Evanovich - 166 pages
16. Blood Rites - Jim Butcher - 372 pages
17. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - 245 pages
18. Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist - 513 pages
19. The Spellman Files - Lisa Lutz - 368 pages
20. Little Stalker - Jennifer Belle - 333 pages
21. Watchers - Dean Koontz - 352 pages
22. Lost and Found - Carolyn Parkhurst - 289 pages
23. Dead Beat - Jim Butcher - 396 pages
24. Steve & Me - Terri Irwin - 273 pages
25. Bright Lights, Big Ass - Jen Lancaster - 385 pages
26. Curse of the Spellmans - Lisa Lutz - 407 pages
27. Bleeding Kansas - Sara Paretsky - 431 pages
28. Dead Witch Walking - Kim Harrison - 416 pages
29. The Abstinence Teacher - Tom Perrotta - 358 pages
30. The Good Guy - Dean Koontz - 493 pages
31. The Double Bind - Chris Bohjalian - 368 pages