- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (Mar 14 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0679771476
- ISBN-13: 978-0679771470
- Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 1.9 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #269,024 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In Chris Bohjalian's fine follow-up to Midwives, individual judgment and the unconventional again clash with the medical and legal forces of tradition. In rural Vermont, two years after his wife's sudden death, an exhausted state's attorney can hope for little but a quiet life with his 4-year-old daughter. Leland Fowler's only goal is a cure for the common cold--his own, that is, which has dragged on for months. As it turns out, his appointment with the town's only homeopath will set to rights his physical and emotional symptoms. At least for a while.
Alas, another of Carissa Lake's patients isn't quite so lucky. Despite her warning that Richard Emmons not go off his prescription drugs, he does exactly that. In fact, during an asthma attack, he takes the homeopathic law of similars--the belief that "like cures like"--to an entirely new level. This tragedy embroils Carissa in an investigation of her practice and forces Leland into a decision that is to alter not only her life but his:
Upstairs, my daughter slept. And for a long time we sat on the floor before the tree, neither of us saying a word, as I worked out in my mind exactly what I would have needed to prosecute this case if a summer cold had not lasted into the fall, and I had not met Carissa Lake. Once I knew, nothing seemed quite so hopeless, and I began to sketch aloud for her exactly what we would want to create in the morning, and exactly what we would want to destroy.Chris Bohjalian is an artist of the small but seismic instant. As this gripping novel proves, he knows all too well the awful daring of a moment's surrender. --Siobhan Carson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
As he proved in last year's Midwives, Bohjalian is adept at examining social and moral issues fraught with ambiguities. Here, again, he focuses on a fallible protagonist whose lapse in ethical judgment is motivated by love and need. Widower Leland Fowler, the chief deputy state's attorney in Burlington, Vt., has been lonely since his wife was killed in an accident two years previously, leaving him to raise his daughter Abby, now four. When traditional methods fail to cure a persistent sore throat caused by stress, he consults homeopath Carissa Lake, receives a remedy that works on the principle of "like cures like" (i.e., using the cause of the illness as the cure)Aand falls desperately in love with Carissa. When another of Carissa's patients misinterprets the law of similars and falls into an allergy-induced coma, Leland realizes that Carissa may be accused of malpractice. Abandoning his judgment and his rectitude, Leland instructs Carissa in fabricating and destroying evidenceAthis while his own office may seek to prosecute her. The consequences are, of course, ineffably sad. Despite his tendency to use foreshadowing with the bluntness of hammer blows, Bohjalian succeeds in escalating tension and communicating the irony of Leland's position. The evocation of domestic routines and the quality of small-town life ring true in beautifully captured details. But despite Bohjalian's evident compassion for decent people who behave irresponsibly in moments of crisis, it may be difficult for readers to accept Leland's unethical behavior, no matter how deep his emotional need. Since credibility is essential in understanding Leland's fall from grace, one finishes the novel wishing that Bohjalian had been able to portray his hero's quandary without so completely betraying Leland's moral principles. Author tour. (Jan.) FYI: Jessica Lange will appear in the ABC TV movie based on Midwives.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Passions and Moral Imperatives,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Law of Similars: A Novel (Paperback)
This was my first reading of a Bohjalian book and I will definitely read others. It was a compelling, discomforting, frightening, and very readable book.I feel that most of the other reviewers missed the essence of this book: how people swept up by their passions can and do violate their most deeply held moral convictions to protect themselves and the ones they love during times of stress. Leland and Carissa represent two very grounded, moral characters who find each other and become passionately involved. When Leland feels Carissa may be threatened, he compromises his own knowledge of what is right because of how he feels for her. As he proceeds down this path, he comes to believe (and convinces Carissa) that the ends justify the means. Leland comes to learn that he can live with himself and what he has done. Carissa learns that she cannot. I found Bohjalian's protrayal of characters swept up in passions to be entirely realistic. I see this happen every day in real life. Anyone who does not, just isn't looking. It's shocking to realize that people we care about, even look up to, are capable of behavior they would ordinarily excoriate in others. People are very complex and rarely one dimensional. Like other reviews, I found Leland sympathetic in the beginning, but reprehensible by the end. He is a mix of the most admirable (good father, community member) and morally corrupt (self-serving rationalization) features of humanity. I liked Bohjalian's style. While I did not find Leland to be ultimately heroic, I liked the way his character was developed by Bohjalian. I will recommend this book to others.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Passions and Moral Imperatives,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Law of Similars: A Novel (Paperback)
This was my first reading of a Bohjalian book and I will definitely read others. It was a compelling, discomforting, frightening, and very readable book.I feel that most of the other reviewers missed the essence of this book: how people swept up by their passions can and do violate their most deeply held moral convictions to protect themselves and the ones they love during times of stress. Leland and Carissa represent two very grounded, moral characters who find each other and become passionately involved. When Leland feels Carissa may be threatened, he compromises his own knowledge of what is right because of how he feels for her. As he proceeds down this path, he comes to believe (and convinces Carissa) that the ends justify the means. Leland comes to learn that he can live with himself and what he has done. Carissa learns that she cannot. I found Bohjalian's protrayal of characters swept up in passions to be entirely realistic. I see this happen every day in real life. Anyone who does not, just isn't looking. It's shocking to realize that people we care about, even look up to, are capable of behavior they would ordinarily excoriate in others. People are very complex and rarely one dimensional. Like other reviews, I found Leland sympathetic in the beginning, but reprehensible by the end. He is a mix of the most admirable (good father, community member) and morally corrupt (self-serving rationalization) features of humanity. I liked Bohjalian's style. While I did not find Leland to be ultimately heroic, I liked the way his character was developed by Bohjalian. I will recommend this bood to others.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Conflict of interest,
By "acoword" (Oregon) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Law of Similars: A Novel (Paperback)
The heart of the book is the essential conflict of interest between Leland Fowler and Carissa Lake. Leland is a state prosecutor and Carissa is being accused of a crime. What tangles it all up is Leland's feelings for Carissa. While I agreed with some of the other reviewers that it did seem odd that Leland, a successful legal mind and a father, would sacrifice everything for Carissa, it was more believable in light of the fact that he is a widow who terribly misses his dead wife. Carissa reawakens something in him that two years of greiving have depleted, and he doesn't want to lose it. I didn't find Leland Fowler terribly likable, nor did I find myself rooting for Carissa. But, the book somehow worked nonetheless. It was well-written, and as usual Bojhalion tackled an interesting subject, in this case whether homeopathy is a viable alternative medicine. I read it raptly, and although it wasn't as good as Midwives, I recommend it.
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