Books and Cooks: The Double Bind

WE'RE READING:

I'M SERVING: MAPLE SUGAR SNICKERDOODLES

I must admit, being an English major and an English teacher and all, I was intrigued by one major premise of this book. Some action takes place in Gatsby country--West Egg, Long Island specifically. Characters from The Great Gastby like Tom and Daisy Buchanan and their daughter Pamela play pivotal roles. The central character, Laurel Eastabrook, grew up in West Egg and spent her summers at the country club which used to be Gatsby's house.

Okay, I'll bite. I willingly suspend disbelief if I suspect the story might pay off well in the end. However...

**SPOILER ALERT**



...I saw one twist coming from a mile away. Several miles, actually. I was maybe a quarter into the book when I suspected that Bobbie Crocker was not only the supposedly dead Buchanan heir, but was Jay Gatsby's kid. Yes on both counts.

What really irked me, though, was the realization about two-thirds of the way in that I'd read this book before. Interspersed through the narrative are reports from a psychiatrist at the state mental hospital about the patient's current state of mind. I began to be suspicious that these notes weren't about the obviously crazy person in the narrative, schizophrenic Bobbie Crocker, but Laurel herself. Yes on that one, too.

Shades of the late Robert Cormier's I Am the Cheese.

Frankly, Cormier did it better. Much creepier in tone, more shocking ending. The Double Bind has been described as a high-wire act, but those aren't suspenseful when you can see the safety harnesses holding the writer up. And when the safety harness is one of the best-known and most talked-about young adult novels ever, your deviation needs to be really special to stand on its own. Cormier all the way. Bohjalian not so much.



**END SPOILERS**

From a writer's point of view, I have to say that the prose itself disappointed. Case in point, one of the more annoying authorial choices I've encountered lately. Two characters, Laurel and her boss, Kathryn, are speaking. Laurel is a social worker, Kathryn is her mentor and the director of a homeless shelter. In the middle of the conversation, one of them gets identified as "the social worker" or "the mentor" or "the social worker's boss" instead of "Laurel" or "Kathryn" or any available pronoun. I don't know if the usage was intended as part of the overall construct of the book (spoilers above explain) or just oddball Bohjalian style, but it drove me nuts.

This was my first foray into Bohjalian land, and I can't say I'd recommend it. As they say down South, "That dog won't hunt." Can't imagine I'll be rushing to Borders for his backlist, neither.