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Joy Lee Rutter
Hunger Member
Post Number:
88
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 25, 2004 - 07:33 pm: |   |
Hello!
I just finished reading Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. He also wrote Mystic River, which you may be more familiar with since it was made into a movie. Anyway, if you have not read Shutter Island, I recommend it. Lehane's style is different. When I started the book, it seemed a bit subtle...slow, but there was something about it that kept me glued. And I had no idea what "it" was. Just a hint of something strange...out of sorts. The more I read, the more I wanted to read. That "something strange", of course, was the shocking twist revealed at the end.
If your writing, like mine, enjoys an unexpected twist at the end, read Lehane's work. His timing, and amazing word play...wow. I didn't see that twist coming.
Here is the synopsis:
The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades -- with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels.
Joy Lee Rutter 
"A Disturbing Presence" &
soon: "A Flamboyant Disarray of Dreams" |
F.E. Mazur (Unregistered Guest)
Work-in-progress guest
Posted From: 4.224.78.147
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 26, 2004 - 12:29 am: | |
Thanks for the recommendation. I've been meaning to pick up Shutter Island ever since I read a Lehane short story in a recent Atlantic Monthly. It was a terrific piece written entirely in the second person. And the movie Mystic River is one of those I'll watch again and again. |
Joy Lee Rutter
Hunger Member
Post Number:
89
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 26, 2004 - 06:04 am: | |
The "down side" of reading a terrific book, is that it's a hard act to follow. I have a pile of books I planned to read after Shutter Island, and I can't seem to open myself up to them. I might read Shutter Island again. When you find the amazing twist at the end, it's worth it to reread so you can find the many play-on-words the author uses. Not only did he sidetrack his readers, he takes you on a path of questions without answers, & characters that do not "add up". Lehane puts you inside the protagonist's head; there are many times you don't want to be there. You don't know why you're uncomforable there, but the underlying "truth" is there be no...way...out. 
Joy Lee Rutter
"A Disturbing Presence"
& soon "A Flamboyant Disarray of Dreams" |
Kevin Yarbrough
Wandering Member
Post Number:
143
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 26, 2004 - 06:34 pm: | |
Shutter Island was a fantastic book, as is some of Lehane's other. The first book by him I read was Prayers for Reign and it was awesome. Shutter Island blew me away. Many twists, dead ends, and confusing characters.
A must read.
Kevin |
mark dirschel
Wandering Member
Post Number:
161
Registered: 01-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 07:45 pm: | |
shutter island was a brilliant execution of suspenseful prose.
dennis lehane is most definitely a new favorite.
- mark |
F.E. Mazur (Unregistered Guest)
Work-in-progress guest
Posted From: 4.131.53.129
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 06:33 am: | |
I finished it last night, and I might just have to read it again. The ending still presents ambiguities, and the plot, when regarded as plot only, seems convoluted, but taken as something to illustrate the workings of the protagonist's mind, then it's really SOMETHING ELSE. |
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