The Law of Similars: A Novel [Hardcover]

Chris Bohjalian (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 1998

From the best-selling author of Midwives comes a startlingly powerful story of three people whose lives are irrevocably changed by illness, healing, and love.  

Two years after his wife's sudden, accidental death, a Vermont deputy state prosecutor, Leland Fowler, finds that the stress of raising their small daughter alone has left him with a chronic sore throat. Desperate to rid himself of a malady that has somehow managed to elude conventional medicine, Leland turns to homeopath Carissa Lake--who cures both his sore throat and the aching loneliness at the root of his symptoms.
        
Just days after Leland realizes he has fallen in love with the first woman who has mattered to him since his wife, one of Carissa's asthma patients falls into an allergy-induced coma. When Carissa comes under investigation, straight-arrow Leland is faced with a moral and ethical dilemma of enormous proportions.

Set against the ongoing clash between conventional and alternative medicine--between what we know science can offer and the miracles that always seem to be just beyond our reach--The Law of Similars is a  haunting and deeply atmospheric tale.
        
Chris Bohjalian is known for the compassion and grace that mark his characters as well as for the sheer storytelling power that propels his fiction. With The Law of Similars, he has offered something more: a page-turning examination of the fragile threads that hold people together when the worst that can happen really does...and the unexpected and luminous ways we are made well. It is a remarkable achievement.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 275 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; First Edition edition (December 29, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517705869
• ISBN-13: 978-0517705865
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #827,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chris Bohjalian is the author of fourteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers, The Night Strangers, Secrets of Eden, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, Before You Know Kindness, The Law of Similars, and Midwives.

His new novel, The Night Strangers, is a ghost story inspired by a door in his basement and Sully Sullenberger's successful ditching of an Airbus in the Hudson River.

Secrets of Eden, his 2010 novel, will air as a Lifetime Television movie on January 28, 2012. It stars John Stamos and Anna Gunn.

Chris won the New England Book Award in 2002, and his novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, a Publishers Weekly "Best Book," and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. His work has been translated into over 25 languages and twice before become movies ("Midwives" and "Past the Bleachers"). You can see some of the international covers on this web site.

He has written for a wide variety of magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and has been a Sunday columnist for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since 1992. Chris graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

You can learn more about him here on the Q and A, as well as on Facebook . And, if you like, follow him on twitter as well.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A flawed and imperfect human being, May 3, 2000

By 

Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Law of Similars (Paperback)

The state of Vermont. Non-traditional medicine. A tragic death. Moral and legal ambiguities. A deeply engrossing story. Great characterization.

Sound familiar?

Yes. This is familiar territory for Chris Bohjalian, author of the best-selling "Midwives". And again, he does a great job.

I love the way he structures his books. The reader generally knows what is going to happen, but just doesn't know exactly how. And that is what the fascination is. That is what kept me reading, following the protagonist's thoughts and actions and totally getting into his skin.

The story is told in the first person by Leland Fowler, an 35-year old attorney in the Vermont State prosecutor's office. Just two years before, his wife died in a tragic car accident, leaving him to raise his young daughter, now aged 4. He's grieved for his wife for a long time, and his life lacks much pleasure.

When he develops a sore throat and cold that just doesn't go away he visits the local homeopath, Carissa Lake. There is an immediate attraction. His cold gets cured and a romance develops.

However, when one of Carissa's clients falls into a coma, there are legal and moral issues that come into play. The situation becomes more and more complex as Leland makes some ethnical choices that force him into a trap of his own making.

The title, "The Law of Similars" refers to a basic tenet of homeopathy whereby the patient is treated with an extremely diluted dose of something that has caused his problem, forcing the body to cure itself. For example, a person with poison ivy might take a weakened solution of an herb that is similar to poison ivy.

It is all fascinating reading -- the homeopathy, the legalities, and the ethical questions. But most of all, it is the characterization of Leland Fowler that is most outstanding. Basically, he is a flawed and imperfect human being who sometimes makes poor choices. This is something that we all can relate to.

The other characters are never quite as fully developed, but it doesn't matter. This is Leland Fowler's story all the way.

The success of "Midwives" makes this book a rough act to follow, and at first I was disappointed because the author used the same landscape. It is also only 320 pages long and I missed the length and complexities that a few more characters might have brought. But I just couldn't stop reading.

I recommend this book even though it misses getting my highest rating. There is no doubt in my mind though, that I will be on the lookout for Mr. Bohjalian's next book.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Starts off well, but overall weak., August 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Law of Similars: A Novel (Hardcover)

Did not read Midwives. This was my first Chris Bohjalian book. I was looking forward to it because I had read good things about Midwives, I live in Vermont and I know some homeopathy. I found the protagonist very likable in the beginning, although subtly suffering from a not-so-well-hidden "poor me" complex. But that was still understandable after all the poor man had been through... Things deteriorated for me when he started salivated at every skirt, young or old, that twitched in front of him. The foot fetish thing was not anything I could relate to in a positive way either. And, to top things off, the plot crumbled altogether with unbelievable issues, even more unbelievable denouements of same issues, pilfered homeopathic remedies that can be purchased for a few dollars in any health food store, unrealistic reactions to "overdoses" of arsenicum (please!...), an unreachable, unlikable, underdescribed, overall unhashed-out character of a homeopath/girlfriend. The main character lapsing back into his veiled "poor me" role at the unsatisfactory ending. On a more positive note, I found the basic writing style to be very good. Nice structure, well-turned phrases.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars DECENT READ BUT DISAPPOINTING IN LIGHT OF MIDWIVES, January 29, 2000

By 

D. LEE "dml48221" (Palo Alto, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Law of Similars: A Novel (Hardcover)

I thought the book was a decent read but fell short of the type of character and plot development exhibited in Midwives. Good research on the subject of homeopathy but the story line was pretty flat. Unfortunately, the ending was pretty weak. It could have been a very good book given the subject matter however, it did not appear as if the author took the time to delve into the characters. They were pretty much superficial.