Shutter Island

Rating:
Summary: Glorious Non-stop Scary Fun
Review: Just read this book. I picked it up at the airport. I've never read any of Mr. Lehane's other books. I COULD NOT STOP READING IT. I read it on the plane from Vancouver to Los Angeles. I read it until I couldn't see anymore. What else do you WANT from a book for God's sake? It's FABULOUS. It breaks your heart and pulls you in and makes you THINK. It's just good writing and there is no substitute for that.

Rating:
Summary: My first Lehane
Review: This was my first Lehane book and I must say I'm not impressed. I found it a bit formulaic, recalling bad memories of Dallas. I would think any avid mystery reader would have this story solved just by reading the back of the book.

It wasn't a total waste of my time. I liked the character development and found Teddy's love for his wife endearing. However, it does have loose ends and the ending is left up for interpretation.


Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but confusing.
Review: I have to admit, this was a page-turner, but I expected more. By the end, I was rather confused and, when I finished, I felt as if there should have been more to the story. Otherwise, I think it was a great idea and it wasn't one where you can guess what is going to happen before you get to the end.
Also, he didn't proofread it very well. There was one very long run-on sentence that was rather annoying. Not a very big deal, but still annoying.

Rating:
Summary: You have a right to be confused.
Review: Yes this book is a real page turner. It was recommended to me three days ago and I've already finished it and am rightly confused and wondering what it all means. It is a great story of distortion, suspense, intrique and deceit. I really enjoyed this book and I guess the ending is left up to everyone's own interpretation. Go read it. You will be pleasantly surprised if not confused and mesmerized for a long time.

Rating:
Summary: A Dark Thriller
Review: This is a dark book. Besides being a mystery, it is a psychological and spiritual thriller. Why spiritual? Because for the second straight book, Lehane portrays a world that is scarred by Evil. Yes, we're dealing with diminished capacity in some cases, but what do think those references to Auschwitz are about? Why is the warden in the story? Can one be insane and evil? Lehane does an excellent job creating a sense of foreboding that keeps you glued to the pages. He draws on King Lear (going mad during a storm), film (the Wicker Man), and recent tragedies (Andrea Yates' killing of her children) to tell the story of Shutter Island. I read this book in two nights because I had to find out what fate awaits our protagonist, Teddy Daniels. Shutter Island is a horror story that goes to the depths of our being.

Rating:
Summary: This Would Make a Good Movie
Review: I enjoyed Shutter Island ~~ it was a quick read. I read it because I enjoyed Mystic River so much and found it to be a much different style of storytelling. By the middle of the book, I could not wait to see how it was going to end. The ending is very, very different then I expected and I still have some questions and loose ends I'd like to have answered. I did enjoy Mystic River a lot more, but I really do feel Shutter Island would make a very good and suspensful movie (that way I could see if the ending is as I thought it was). A good read for the mystery buffs.

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.