The Double Bind

The Double Bind is a 2007 psychological thriller novel by Armenian-American author Chris Bohjalian. Set in present-day Vermont, it follows a college student named Laurel Estabrook who is assaulted while on a bike ride. Traumatized from the incident, the formerly extroverted Estabrook becomes timid and private, shifting her focus to photography and working at a homeless shelter. At the shelter, she meets a man named Bobbie Crocker, and becomes entwined in an investigation into his dark family history. The novel heavily relies on narrative doubt and the suspension of evidence to call into question Estabrook’s tenuous grip on reality, including the memory of her own assault. The novel is resonant with recent discourse in America on the sexual assault of women, and society’s tendency to privilege men’s judgments, allegations, and memories over theirs.

The novel begins on a Sunday evening in Vermont. Estabrook is in the middle of the fall semester of her sophomore year, and takes a break from her studies to go on a bike ride on a back trail. She is cut off by a brown van, out of which two men climb and seize her before she can escape. Unable to separate her feet from her bike, they throw her atop the bike into the back of the van, breaking her collar bone on impact. The sound of her screams reaches a nearby trio of attorneys, who rush to the scene. The men in the van try to drive over Estabrook and make a getaway, but only crush her bicycle.

Estabrook recovers in the hospital and takes the rest of the semester off. She avoids riding her bike on trails, and joins a homeless shelter called BEDS, where she is soon asked to join as a paid staff member. She meets Bobbie Crocker, who has just been checked out of a state mental facility. Crocker is eighty-two, and only lives for a few months before dying, leaving behind a box of photos from the 1920’s. Estabrook looks through his photos and finds photos of him and a girl named Pamela, the daughter of Daisy Buchanan (an allusion to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby).



Estabrook begins to investigate how such a well-connected man became homeless. She tracks down Pamela, who reacts with extreme suspicion, preferring to keep her family matters private. She claims that Bobbie has been dead for four decades, and asks for the photos Estabrook alleges to have. When Estabrook suggests that Bobbie was Pamela’s brother, she sends her away. Pamela privately reveals that they were indeed siblings, and remembers the night Bobbie disappeared after fighting their father, Tom. He did not return until shortly after their mother was buried, and stayed only briefly.

Meanwhile, Estabrook finds further evidence that Bobby was Daisy Gatsby’s daughter. After being diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was ostracized and shamed by his family. Estabrook finds a man who claims to be Bobbie’s son, and recognizes him as one of her attackers. Inexplicably, the man apologizes for raping her, even though she was not raped. He claims to have met his co-conspirator at a homeless shelter.

Estabrook returns to Gatsby’s house and finds a box of undeveloped photos taken by Bobbie. The box contains a picture of Daisy as well as a letter written by Jay Gatsby asking for her hand in marriage, acknowledging that Bobbie is her son. Estabrook returns to Vermont to deliver the evidence.



When she enters her apartment, Estabrook is confronted by virtually everyone she has recently interacted with, including her old psychiatrist and her parents. The psychiatrist furnishes a letter declaring her mentally unsound and exhibiting symptoms of PTSD and bipolar disorder. It also claims that she faked the bike attack during an intense manic episode, then managed to convince an unstable man at BEDS that he was the son of a fictional character. The novel’s end implies that Estabrook is admitted to a psychiatric institution, but leaves the veracity of either side of the story completely ambiguous. The plot of The Double Bind permits two extremely different interpretations, forcing its readers to choose for themselves whether its protagonist is sane or mad.