Shutter Island : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: My favorite Lehane!
Review: I've read everything by Lehane (though I found his series rather farfetched), and I definately liked Shutter Island the best. Yes, it's very different, but I really dig all the the twists and turns. It's great that he's trying something totally different. Not enough authors do.
This was the first book I read by Lehane, so I didn't know this at the time, but he didn't include his usual amazing, thought provoking prose that is plentiful in his other books, such as Mystic River.
Lehane has shown his proven his obvious talen for writing again and again. Now I hope he can write a book that is more realistic, or thought provoking, than his previous novels have been Patrick Kenzie novels have been, but also include his thought provoking style.

Rating:
Summary: Help !! Could you please explain me the end ???
Review: I immensely enjoyed Mystic River (5 stars de luxe...) and jumped at the occasion to read again a book by the same extremely talented author. But I didn't understand the end of the book (may be my English is to blame - not my mother tongue), that's why I rate it only 4 stars.
Is someone out there capable of decoding the end for me ??

Rating:
Summary: Okay, but just okay
Review: I'm a little baffled by all of the adoring reviews this book has received. Yes, "Shutter Island" has a twist ending, but you can see it coming from a mile away (particularly if you grew up watching endless reruns of "Twilight Zone," "Thriller," and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," as I did). To make matters worse, it isn't a particularly well thought-out twist; there are loose ends left dangling everywhere.

I was also thrown off by Lehane's numerous anachronisms. The book is supposed to be set in 1954, but there are references to items made of plastic, contemporary phrases like "anger management issues," a discussion of the hospital's "electronic security system," etc. Silly me -- I thought these were CLUES that the story wasn't really taking place in 1954 at all! Turns out Lehane is just lazy.

"Shutter Island" is an enjoyable pool or airport read, but that's about it.

Rating:
Summary: Where are Patrick and Angie?
Review: I know Lehane from the four detective stories featuring Patrick and Angie. I still remember the first sentence of his I read: "A piece of advice: If you follow someone in my nieghborhood, don't wear pink." The Lehane I knew wrote like Raymond Chandler - tight prose, clever dialog, and street-wise metaphors.

I suffer the first 30 pages of Shutter Island. The only mystery so far is what's up with Lehane's. Not satisfied with one banal opening sentence, he gives us two - Prologue and Chapter 1.

He gives us time as a series of bookmarks that one flips between, memories that inhabit the brain like lit matches, silken velvet, islands that grip the scalp of the sea, globes of oxygen, and sentences that run on and on and on and on and on and on.

A character who has just thrown up spends a paragraph describing a sea-worn mirror. The same character has "a dull ache ... just behind his eye, as if the flat side of an old spoon was pressed there." Flat side of an old spoon, what's that? Doesn't sound
that painful to me. And what about migraines that "turn light into a hailstorm of hot nails."

The story may be as good as other reviewers say, as good as one expects from Lehane, but please don't expect Lehane at his best.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Good Read, But...
Review: First of all, let me warn you; several people who have written reviews for this book have spoiled the surprise ending in their reviews, an amazingly unpardonable act in my opinion. Do not read the review by Robert Hazelwood if you intend to read this book and don't want the ending spoiled.

Now, on to the book itself. Shutter Island was as well-written as all the other Dennis Lehane books. The premise is interesting; a pair of US Marshals are sent to an island which houses a facility for the criminally insane in order to track down one of the escaped prisoners during a hurricane. The book has witty, well-drawn characters, a gloomy setting, and plenty of ingredients for a real hair-raising thriller. There are several very creepy scenes and the whole feel of the book is bleak and moody, almost like a haunted house story. The surprise ending was, I thought, well-done and made the book very unique compared to many other bestsellers.

The book did, however, have its flaws. There are some important people and events who are mentioned early in the book but are very quickly glossed over, then when they appear later on you have no idea who they are because Lehane fails to remind us. The book also suffered from its pacing; it's a short book by today's standards, only 360 pages, and I felt that it should have either been far longer, with more detailed explanations and more creepy scenes which took advantage of the scary setting of the novel, or it should have been much shorter---this book could easily have been a novella, actually, running no more than about 100 pages.

All in all, though, Shutter Island was an enjoyable book which will give you the shivers while you're reading it and haunt you for several days after you're finished. This would be a perfect book for a plane trip or a day at the beach.