Read it again, the ending begs
I don’t know how I feel about books whose endings are so unexpected that it makes me want to reread the story.
Just thinking about immediately rereading a book seems exhausting and somehow diminishes the accomplishment of finishing it in the first place. Re-watching a movie with such an ending, like “The Sixth Sense,” is so much easier.
I was faced with this situation last weekend, when I finished “The Double Bind” by Chris Bohjalian. It’s about a twentysomething woman whose life was changed after two men attacked her in the Vermont woods. She begins working at a homeless shelter after college and, at the onset of the book, is given the task to reprint photographs taken by a deceased client.
Curious about how a man who once took photographs of celebrities and presidents ended up homeless, the woman begins to investigate his life.
The shocking conclusion left me questioning aspects of the story so much so that I wanted to start again, but the copy of Stephenie Meyer’s “New Moon” that my sister gave me as a birthday present last month looked too tempting.
“The Double Bind” can wait.
