Last modified: Tuesday, October 7, 2008 2:51 AM EDT HICKMAN: Gatsby and the ties that 'Double Bind' (Spoiler alert: I have revealed some plot aspects here that you may not want to read until after you have finished reading "The Double Bind.") Noted author Chris Bohjalian of Vermont brings a fresh and exciting approach to "The Great Gatsby," as well as his own Gatsby-based psychological thriller, "The Double Bind." Bohjalian spoke at the Attleboro Public Library Monday night as part of the city's latest Big Read promotion, where the community is encouraged to read a book together. The latest selection is "The Great Gatsby." In Fitzgerald's classic, James Gatz, ashamed of his past and pedigree, reinvents himself to win the heart of Daisy Buchanan. In Bohjalian's novel, the 21st century character Laurel Estabrook embarks on a quest to reinvent herself and a past that beats on dangerously "against the current." The narrator begins with this story: As a sophomore in college, Laurel Estabrook is viciously attacked by two men while riding her bike on a forested path in Vermont. Six years later, working at a homeless shelter in Burlington, Laurel is handed a beaten-up box of black and white photographs once jealously guarded by a likeable schizophrenic named Bobbie Crocker, now deceased. A photographer herself, Laurel begins to wade through the mysterious photos that her boss, Katherine, thinks may be worthy of restoring and exhibiting as a way to raise money for the shelter. Among the unexplained black and white photographs of famous Jazz Age singers and celebrities, Laurel discovers pictures of two children in front of the "Gatsby mansion in West Egg," and alarmingly, a more recent snapshot of a girl biking on a forested road in Vermonta girl wearing a shirt she recognizes, a girl who looks very like herself. With the anniversary of her savage attack approaching, and the photo triggering memories of that event, Laurel seizes upon the idea that Bobbie Crocker not only took her picture hours before the attack, but that her very identity is intimately connected to his. The Gatsby ties Our rather unreliable narrator lures us into a meta-fictional universe from the get-go, blending fact and fiction, telling us early on that Laurel grew up in Gatsby's "West Egg," Long Island - "the safe haven of her childhood" - and that the country club where she swam and sailed, "had once been the home of Jay Gatsby." Characters, settings, details and startling parallels from "The Great Gatsby" build an increasingly complex fictional world. Daisy and Tom Buchanan's now elderly daughter, Pamela Marshfield, plays a central role in the novel, her chapters alone convincing us to suspend disbelief and enter the dark rabbit hole of self-discovery along with Laurel. "The Double Bind" leads us deep into psychological terrain. As the pace of the book quickens, we sense that Laurel is trying to run faster than her shadow. To the detriment of her own health and relationships, she spends countless hours in the darkroom and library, trawls the Internet, and travels to interview everyone who might know something about the elusive photographer. Who was Bobbie Crocker? Could it be Jay Gatsby's son? What was his connection to the two men who are currently serving jail sentences for attacking her? Laurel's life comes crashing down as her obsession with discovering Bobbie's secrets leads her further and further from the fragile protective shell she had created and deeper into a reality she is terrified to face. Laurel's desperate journey to connect the dots in an illusory universe is heartbreaking and compelling. Her story resonates with the realization that we often need a narrative, at times a fictional one, to make sense of our lives. Bohjalian's interweaving of "fiction" and "reality" raises questions for the reader about the real and the imagined. We, too, can be masters of self-deception, even as we relate, and often fabricate, the quotidian details of our own lives. And so, in the end, "The Double Bind" is a glimpse into the creative process itselfa novel that is not only a riveting drama, but a brilliant evocation of the power of stories, the magical realm of the imagination that can both create and destroy that which seeks to crush us. "Fiction is a trick of the mind and heart," observed F. Scott Fitzgerald. "The Great Gatsby" and "The Double Bind" trick our minds and hearts with brilliantly imagined characters and stories. And yet, in those stories we may see our true selves with a clarity that takes our breath away.