Rating: 
Summary: Powerful and heartbreaking
Review: Mystic River is the first Lehane novel I've read. It will NOT be the last. This novel is amazing. As a mystery, it's predictable. I knew pretty well who had killed Katie Marcus by about page 150. But, really, that's not what the book is about. It's about pain and fragility of the human condition, as all good crime novels are about. The plot is pretty simple. Three childhood friends are reunited by the murder of a young woman. Jimmy Marcus, the girl's father, is an ex-con who has been on the straight and narrow for years. Sean Divine is the cop investigating the murder. Dave Boyle, who as a boy was kidnaped and abused, is related to Jimmy by marriage; he's also the prime suspect. As the novel progresses, it's obvious that this murder is just the beginning of a series of tragedies, as each character tries to decipher how best to handle this awful crime. The conclusion is heartbreaking and sickening, and completely unforgettable. An excellent novel.
Rating:
Summary: Mystic River -- an Experience
Review: It is 1975 and three naïve 11-year-old boys are fighting on the streets of a Boston neighborhood. A car drives up and takes one away. As out-of-the-blue as it came, it was gone, leaving the lives of all three boys forever changed.
Something about Lehane's writing brings tears to your eyes and an ache to your heart for a girl you have barely met. It fills you with heart-wrenching compassion for the most terrible crimes of a convict. A desperate anger pushed aside by helplessness...an odd comfort in the greatest times of fear...in these 400 pages, Lehane rips out your heart and takes it on the most unpredictable rollercoaster of emotions.
Mystic River opens your eyes and offers you a little bit of a different perspective into life in this world - one that is a little bit less judgmental and a little bit more open-hearted.
Powerful and mesmerizing, I would recommend Lehane's novel to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Mystic River -- an Experience
Review: It is 1975 and three naïve 11-year-old boys are fighting on the streets of a Boston neighborhood. A car drives up and takes one away. As out-of-the-blue as it came, it was gone, leaving the lives of all three boys forever changed.
Something about Lehane's writing brings tears to your eyes and an ache to your heart for a girl you have barely met. It fills you with heart-wrenching compassion for the most terrible crimes of a convict. A desperate anger pushed aside by helplessness...an odd comfort in the greatest times of fear...in these 400 pages, Lehane rips out your heart and takes it on the most unpredictable rollercoaster of emotions.
Mystic River opens your eyes and offers you a little bit of a different perspective into life in this world - one that is a little bit less judgmental and a little bit more open-hearted.
Powerful and mesmerizing, I would recommend Lehane's novel to everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Eastwood Cries a Better River
Review: I don't often come across a book that I like less than its movie adaptation, but Mystic River happened to be one of those books. Just because an author can elaborate with thousands of words - it doesn't mean that he should, and this incredibly drawn out story made me wish for the exactness of gifted authors like Graham Greene. Clint Eastwood did the story justice though - and his portrayal of the characters was exactly what the audience needed to know...
Rating:
Summary: A real page turner!
Review: This was a truly intriguing book with characters that were three dimensional. I was truly stumped as to who really was the true killer until the last quarter of the book. Very well written and vivid story telling that made the book come alive. I felt the pain of all three of the main characters as if they were real. Great book!
Rating:
Summary: Betrayal Begets Betrayal
Review: They were three pre-adolescent chums in one of Boston's poorer neighborhoods in 1975. To call them friends might have been a stretch. Jimmy, the savviest of the three, suffered from what we might call today a conduct disorder. He engaged in risky behaviors that startled his two compadres and raised eyebrows of adults. Sean was brighter than the rest, though not smart enough to realize that Jimmy was stealing his prized items from right under his nose. Dave was what we would call today the nerd, struggling to prove himself worthy of the other two with poorly timed jokes and the other mannerisms of estrangement. They were a little pack, and if they had been animals instead of boys, the Discovery Channel would have commented on their strange interdependence for survival in the dangerous jungle.
But boys will be boys, and one day while scrapping in the street they are accosted by plain clothes detectives in an unmarked car who order them into the back seat for the perfunctory "scare `em good and call their parents" routine. Here we see the defining moment of their personalities. The pliant and thoroughly frightened Dave follows orders, but Jimmy and Sean could not help but notice that Boston's finest were looking a bit seedy that morning. Why, the back seat was littered with trash, for gosh sakes. It was as if the cops sized up the other two and vice versa, and both groups backed off with Dave alone in the back seat. Only later do Jimmy and Sean realize that they had let their erstwhile sidekick ride off into the unknown with hardened pedophiles. Dave would return four days later, to forever bear the invisible brand of damaged goods on his psyche.
Turn the clock ahead twenty five years, to a time when Pedro pitched every fifth day and Nomar anchored the Sox infield. The boys were now grizzled men. Dave had somehow married and survived his ordeal, on the surface at least. But he is not doing well professionally, and one senses that deep inside he carries the mark of Cain and the energy for a terrible day of reckoning. Sean had worked his way to detective rank on the Boston police force. Jimmy, not surprisingly, had taken the more sinister route. By the age of eighteen he was the acknowledged crime captain of his neighborhood, a poor man's Godfather. Married with an infant child, he had been pinched by the cops, kept his mouth shut, done the dime, and returned to his neighborhood in higher esteem than ever.
But now he wanted out of that business. His beloved wife had died, leaving him sole parent of a young girl who did not know him. Jimmy opened a legitimate concern and invested himself over the years in making a life for his beloved daughter, Katie. She had indeed grown into a fine young eighteen year old woman with enough of her father's spunk to occasionally do something stupid, like drink with her friends in a less than reputable neighborhood. It was on such an outing, the night before her niece's First Communion, that Katie's life would come to its tragic demise.
This grisly murder sparks a parallel investigation. Sean, of course, seeks the perpetrator as a matter of course. This, after all, is his life's avocation. The fact that the victim is the daughter of his old chum adds an emotional element, but Sean is all business. He is relentless, but he works in the civilized world of due process. His investigation is slow, painstaking, thorough, and in the context of what follows, not fast enough. He has a suspect in mind, but he works slowly and prudently enough that in case he is wrong, no harm and no foul.
Jimmy, alas, has no such encumbrances. He too seeks his daughter's killer. Coming out of retirement, so to speak, he has no worries about district attorneys and tainted evidence. Jimmy has a suspect in his sights, too. But even with his freedom of movement, he is having as much difficulty as Sean is until he receives damning information from about as unsuspecting an informant as one can imagine. In a scene worthy of a Hitchcock film, Jimmy hears what he wants to hear from a witness whose meaning is entirely misconstrued. Thus fortified, he becomes judge, jury, and executioner.
In the final tally, both Sean and Jimmy are wrong in their conclusions, though Sean has done nothing that can't be fixed. Jimmy, on the other hand, is responsible for multiple deaths, if one includes the psychological disarray of his informant. We say good bye to the neighborhood of Jimmy, Dave and Sean with the sense that Jimmy is dead, too. Dead to the years of decency when his Katie saved him from his worst criminal self. Jimmy, it is clear, bears no remorse. The worst may be yet to come.
Rating: 
Summary: Coarse, tough-guy fantasies
Review: I thought this one was probably worse and even more gimmicky than Shutter Island. I had a hard time keeping the characters straight and, worse, it didn't really seem to matter anyway. And what was with all that coarseness? Does this guy think he's David Mamet? Sam Shepard? What?
I think that coarseness was really what did the novel in for me. No one really seemed to care about anybody else. Not that I need (or even want) a whole lot of love and emotion dripping from any novel, but there was no connection between these characters at all that served to pique my interest. It was almost an insult to working class neighborhoods in the East. The portrayal seemed to be more of Lehane's rough-and-tough-guy fantasies than anything else.
Rating:
Summary: An unforgettable reading experience
Review: Having read all of Dennis Lehane's books (thoroughly enjoyed the tough, funny and cool Kenzie/Gennaro series, left a bit confused by "Shutter Island"), I really looked forward to sit down with this highly praised novel - before watching the acclaimed movie on DVD.
I'm glad I too the time to read the book first, because
Mystic River" is a novel that will stay with every reader for a long, long time. Deep psychological insights, three-dimensional characters, a dark and fantastic story that will leave no one untouched. On top of being exciting, masterfully plotted and extremely moving, it is also very well written; some sentences and chapters are so brilliantly put into words that reading alone becomes a delight in itself.
Clint Eastwood's movie version is certainly a masterpiece in its own right, but - of course - it can't and doesn't come close to the depth of the original tragic tale crafted by Dennis Lehane.
All in all: "Mystic River" is one of the best books I have ever read. Period.
Rating:
Summary: Lehane's Finest Work
Review: Child molestation is an ugly despicable act that only perpetuates itself--this is a simple theme played on in Dennis Lehane's 'Mystic River.' As children, Jimmy, Sean, and Dave lived in the suburban area of Boston. Their parents all worked for the same employer. One day, Dave is abducted by what the boys believe to be police officers. Eventually, Dave makes his escape, but he is never the same, and neither are his friends.
Years later, Dave, Jimmy, and Sean have become adults. Dave was a baseball star in high school, and now is married with a young son. Sean, the most studious of the group, struggles with alcoholism after his wife left him and he works for the State police. Jimmy has served time in prison, now runs his own store, is on his second marriage, and has several children that he loves dearly. When tragedy strikes Jimmy's family, the three former friends are all drawn into the story.
This story is a bit of a mystery. The questions are: what happened to Jimmy's daughter? Why? Who is responsible? All the questions seem to have obvious answers, but things aren't always what they seem. Lehane has done a masterful job of subtely giving clues and working in plot twists. In addition, Lehane has included some incredible symbolism. As you read the novel, spend some time thinking about what the baseball glove is about. It makes some well timed appearances.
Like Lehane's other work, this isn't a pretty story. "Gritty" is an appropriate description. The subject of child molestation and its effects is a sensitive one. Lehane doesn't go into graphic detail, but he does make the subject central to the story. Overall, it was handled very well.
I have not yet seen the movie adaptation of the novel, so I cannot compare the two. I have heard that the novel and the movie compare favorably to each other, but that is simply hearsay from my perspective, so take it for what it is worth. I felt this novel, although a bit slow in the beginning, became a real page turner in the later half. I was awed when I finished it. I recommend it to any fan of Lehane's work and for those that like a story with a bit of mystery to it.
Rating:
Summary: If you thought the movie was good - READ THE BOOK
Review: "Mystic River" -- by Dennis Lehane - all I can say is if you thought the movie was good, you should read the book! It is a only one of its kind - intelligent, gripping, suspenseful - everything that you would want in a novel and much more. I compare it to: "I Know This Much is True" by Wally Lamb, "Memoriors of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden, and "When It Rains" by Marjorie Spoto, in unique storytelling and "The Davinci Code" by Dan Brown in suspense and storyline. A must read!
|
