Galley Talk

Elizabeth Bluemle, Flying Pig Bookstore, Shelburne, Vt.

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 1/22/2007

Chris Bohjalian's The Double Bind (Shaye Areheart, Feb. 13) is going to be a fantastic book-group read. He has always been a page-turner, but here, Bohjalian also plays with an intriguing literary mystery that disorients not only the main character, but the reader, too—pulling off a fascinating feat of writing. A box of photographs leads Laurel to a startling discovery: a picture that might have been herself seven years earlier, riding a bike on a Vermont dirt road—possibly taken on the same day she was attacked by two men in ski masks. Delving into the mystery of the photo, she becomes obsessed with the photographer's fall from wealth and artistic success to homelessness and alcoholism and tries to connect him to her past. The story was inspired in part by a real box of photographs taken by a man named Bob Campbell, who, like his fictional counterpart, ended up a client of Vermont social services. A fine book to curl up with on a winter's night.