Just finished a great book - The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian. The main story concerns a girl who was attacked when she was in college and, after graduation, has taken a position working with an organization that helps homeless people find homes. One of the men who had been assisted by the organization passes away and leaves a box full of photographs and negatives. The girl becomes obsessed with printing the negatives that hadn't been printed and in finding out who the formerly homeless man had been. Many of the photographs are of famous people, indicating that the man had been a somewhat famous photographer at one point.
Interestingly, the book is loosely based on a real person. There was a homeless man in Vermont (I think) who passed away and left a box of photos containing photos of famous people. The photos used in the book are real and they're very good. And you can definitely recognize some of the famous people, even if you're young like me and don't really recognize people like Eartha Kitt and Flip Wilson right off the bat (or a very young Dick Van Dyke).
And it features one of my absolute favorite literary conventions, the unreliable narrator.
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6 comments:
Oh thank you for the review. I am looking for new reading materials and this one sounds really interesting.
Hey mrsgrumpy,
You're welcome. It's a really good book - I could barely put it down. I hope you enjoy it.
I too like the unreliable narrator! I think I'm going to pick that book up, stat...
Hey Jess! I'm looking forward to your book coming out. I'm really enjoying your blog, so I think I'll love your novel.
I think that feeling when you realize that you can't trust the person telling you the story is awesome. So creepy and mysterious.
Thanks for the tip, I'm going to check it out!
Cool! I really hope you enjoy it!
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