As always, I am indebted to my literary agent, Jane Gelfman; to my editors at Random House-Shaye Areheart, Marty Asher, and Jennifer Jackson; and to my wife, Victoria Blewer, a wonderful reader who manages to balance candor with kindness.
I thank you all.
Finally, I want to acknowledge my appreciation for three books. Two are nonfiction stories about mental illness that were both informative and inspirational: Greg Bottoms’s Angelhead: My Brother’s Descent into Madness, and Nathaniel Lachenmeyer’s The Outsider: A Journey into My Father’s Struggle with Madness.
The third, of course, is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. There are myriad reasons why-along with millions of readers spanning four generations-I have read and reread this novel. Why, as a novelist, I have revered it. There is the poignancy of Gatsby’s great dream, Fitzgerald’s luminescent prose, and the writer’s profound insight into the American character. There is that wrenchingly beautiful ending.
For the purposes of The Double Bind, however, there was something more. Few novels have had the intellectual influence on our literary culture as The Great Gatsby, and fewer still have been as widely read. Second, The Great Gatsby is a book, in part, about broken people, their lies and distortions: the lies we live consciously, and those we convince ourselves are mere embellishments upon a basic reality. That is, perhaps, among the principal issues the characters confront in The Double Bind, too, and why The Great Gatsby presents itself as such a unique and pervasive influence on the fictional Laurel Estabrook.
Consequently, I want to express both my admiration for The Great Gatsby and my gratitude that it is a part of the canon.
P UBLISHER’S NOTE: The author is donating a portion of his royalties to Burlington ’s Committee on Temporary Shelter.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHRIS BOHJALIAN is the author of ten novels, including Before You Know Kindness, The Buffalo Soldier, and Trans-Sister Radio. His novel Midwives was a Publisher’s Weekly “Best Book” and a selection of Oprah’s Book Club. His work has been translated into eighteen languages and published in twenty-one countries. In 2002, he won the New England Book Award for fiction. He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
A NOTE TO THE READER
In order to provide reading groups with the most informed and thought-provoking questions possible, it is necessary to reveal important aspects of the plot of this book-as well as the ending.
If you have not finished reading The Double Bind, we respectfully suggest that you may want to wait before reviewing this guide.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Chris Bohjalian begins the novel with a very matter-of-fact description of a brutal attack. Later in the novel, he writes about Laurel, “she preferred black and white [photography] because she thought it offered both greater clarity and deeper insight into her subjects. In her opinion, you understood a person better in black and white” (Chapter Two). Compare Laurel ’s analysis of photography to the writing style of the author, particularly in the prologue.
2. Bohjalian introduces the world of The Great Gatsby seamlessly into his characters’ lives, and Fitzgerald’s themes resonate deeply within The Double Bind: the death of the American Dream, repeating the past, and self-reinvention, to name a few. Discuss how each author (Fitzgerald and Bohjalian) explores these themes, and examine any others that stood out for you.
3. In a feat of narrative turnaround, The Double Bind ends with a shocking revelation. Did you find yourself reviewing the novel or rereading it to experience it anew? Did you find the treatment of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s characters to be more or less significant in light of the revelation?
4. Discuss Bohjalian’s treatment of homelessness, both as a reality and as an abstraction or social issue. Did The Double Bind change your thoughts and views on the plight of the homeless in America? If so, how?
5. Why did Laurel, as the author writes, allow Talia to “remain a part of her life when she consciously exiled herself from the rest of the herd” (Chapter Ten)?
6. We learn from Laurel that the phrase “Double Bind” is a psychiatric term for a “particular brand of bad parenting [that] could inadvertently spawn schizophrenia” (Chapter Seventeen). What else, in light of Laurel ’s history, might the title of the book refer to?
7. Is Laurel ’s imagined life for Bobbie-and all his psychiatric problems-a way for her to express her own psychotic break? Is the Bobbie Crocker that the reader gets to know really a facet of Laurel ’s personality?
8. Through most of the book the reader believes, along with Laurel, that she escaped certain rape-and that her ability to hold on to her bike saved her. But after the attack, she gives up biking. Discuss the play between the conscious and subconscious mind-a delicate balance that must have underlined all of Laurel ’s actions-in this abandonment of the very thing she’d convinced herself was her savior.
9. In what ways is Dan Corbett’s tattoo of the devil as a skull with horns reminiscent of the billboard of the pair of eyes that overlooks the Valley of Ashes in The Great Gatsby? Is there other imagery in the novel that echoes Fitzgerald’s tropes?
10. “For the first time, [Katherine] began to wonder if she’d made a serious mistake when she’d given Laurel that box of old photos” (Chapter Twelve). Were the photos the catalyst for Laurel ’s downfall? Would Laurel have eventually suffered a similar psychological breakdown without the introduction of the photos?
11. Were you surprised to discover the truth about David’s children? In hindsight, what were the clues?
12. How was Laurel able to block out what really happened to her when she carried real physical scars of the mutilation to remind her of it? Were there clues in the narrative that part of her did know what happened all along?
13. Laurel suffered a horrendous attack and managed to go on to do great work for the most neglected members of society. Does her breakdown have a negating effect on the seemingly heroic work that came before it? Why or why not?
Photographs by Robert Campbell kindly authorized and licensed by his estate
Christopher A. Bohjalian
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