The Law of Similars

by Chris Bohjalian

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▾LibraryThing recommendations

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Showing 1-5 of 15 (next | show all)

This is the first Chirs Bohjalian book I've read. I couldn't stand the main character Leland. Or the homeopath for that matter. What made this book interesting for me was thinking about what I would do in the same situation.

I thought Leland put everything in his life on the line for this woman he had just met despite the fact he's a single father to a young daughter. I couldn't get past that but I do like the way Bohjalian writes and I felt like he gave more details of the characters surroundings than the characters themselves. (

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Tracey8824 | Apr 3, 2013 |

While I think it was interesting to hear this story from Leland's point of view, I think it would have been more powerful to hear the story from Carissa's point of view. However, maybe Bohjalian felt more comfortable with Leland's pov or was trying to explore using a more limited perspective. I might read some more of his books, but, based on this, they're not high on my priority list.

September 2007 COTC Book Club selection. (

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JenJ. | Mar 31, 2013 |

I am a big fan of Bohjalian and while this is not my favorite of his books, I highly recommend it, particularly if you have interest/experience with homeopathic medicine. It is likely to encourage you to learn more about homeopathy. (

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Jcambridge | Feb 26, 2012 |

Very reminiscent of Bohjalian's novel, Midwives, with alternative medicine at the center of unfortunate deaths, followed by legal action. Painful and unsettling. (

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sleahey | Jan 24, 2012 |

This is the third of Bohjalian's books I've read and I find him an easy and graceful storyteller. As always, the tale and characters drew me and held me wrapt for the length of the book. I was particularly interested in his examination of culpability: legal, medical and moral. That I didn't rate it higher has mostly to do with discomfort over the protagonist's actions. As a lawyer and former prosecutor, I couldn't imagine anyone in my acquaintance so violating the legal canon of ethics. Nor can I imagine a committed and caring single parent traversing a path most likely to lead to disbarment or worse. While it might make for good storytelling, I couldn't empathize with Bohjalian's main character as we are meant to do. Haven't read Midwives yet and wonder if I will have similar issues with that book. (

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michigantrumpet | Jun 30, 2011 |

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Carissa Lake

Leland Fowler

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Burlington, Vermont, USA

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Epigraph

"Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?" - Abraham Lincoln, October 13, 1858

"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken heart drieth the bones." - Proverbs 17:22

Dedication

For Shaye Areheart

First words

For almost two full years after my wife died, I slept with my daughter. Obviously, this wasn't Abby's idea (and I think, even if it were, as her father I'd insist now on taking responsibility). After all, she was only two when the dairy delivery truck slammed into her mother's Suburu wagon and drove the mass of chrome and rubber and glass down the embankment and into the shallow river that ran along the side of the road.

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Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0679771476, Paperback)

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

(retrieved from Amazon Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:38:06 -0500)

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In Vermont, a prosecutor forges documents to save an alternative-medicine healer from a malpractice suit. Leland Fowler had his throat infection cured by homeopath Carissa Lake and they fell in love. Now a patient has died on her and she has problems, and soon so will he. By the author of Midwives.… (more)

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