The Law of Similars by Chris Bohjalian is a story about a man still in mourning for his wife, dead over two years, who falls apart physically and mentally after removing his daughter from his bed. I swear, the first line of the book is “For almost two full years after my wife died, I slept with my daughter.” This first line is meant to shock the reader and it does. But what I mostly felt reading this book was a slowly growing repugnance for the characters and a final disappointment in the plot.
Repugnance on a little scale, like the chills I felt when reading about the supposedly alluring attire of the various females our narrator hankers after (never his daughter – it is not that kind of book despite the manipulative and misleading first sentence: he must have read a primer on writing the hook but forgot the ethics of following up the hook with a connecting story). We read about peasant skirts and sandals in Vermont in December! We read about white socks under blue jeans looking sexy — excuse me? We read about floral leggings in spandex –”Black like her socks but silhouetted with flowers” – and we realize 1999 is very long ago.
Repugnance on a larger scale, like when Leland Fowler, an upstanding and tough state prosecutor, helps a possible murder defendant fabricate a story because he’s slept with her once and wants to again and he won’t be able to if she’s imprisoned. Bohjalian is trying to show us how screwed up and lonely Fowler is after losing his wife. Get it? No, I didn’t either. The guy was a sleaze from beginning to end, no matter how much he cared for his daughter (not enough to take the day after Christmas off and hang out with her at home — no, instead he has to shove her off to a friend’s house so he can see how his new hormone therapy is working, i.e., he has to go have sex).
I experienced repugnance on the greatest scale when Mr. Sleaze had his sex therapy: him being sexual was just too icky for me. “White cream”, “Wash her off my face”, “lick her panties” — maybe it’s just that I vehemently despise the word “panties” (I find the word to be degrading and infantilizing) but the word was especially gross the way he described it, wet (from his tongue and other stuff) and hanging off a branch of his Christmas tree (a real family guy).
Just in case you’re worried about his moral compass (lying to protect a possible murderer, trolling the internet for information about female ejaculation, hanging wet panties on his Christmas tree, etc.) , Fowler does goes to church every Sunday and even builds handicapped railings where needed here and there around the sanctuary. Give me sanctuary — from the sex talk of this repellant creature.
I didn’t like any of the characters in this novel, not one of them. But I did like the plot, it was interesting and provoking enough to have propelled these unlikable characters towards growth and change. The plot brought up questions of responsibility and judgment and escape. But despite the potential for all kinds of change and growth on the part of all the characters, none of them changed. None of them grew or matured or immatured. They were static. The man, the child, and the interloper woman are the same at the end of the novel as they were at the beginning, and that does not make for a great book. A great repugnance, perhaps, but not a great book. Underwear, anyone?
