 "Stream of Consciousness at its Best" | 2009-10-09 |
| - Reviewed By User: A9L0KCZBVZDJB |
I have to admit, it took me awhile to tune into Lehane's writing style. He has no compunction about violating most grammar rules we were all taught. Once I surrendered to his unrelenting style, however, I truly enjoyed the unfolding mystery. I've not seen the movie and won't because I don't believe it would be possible to do the book justice.
The plot and ensuing roll out of the characters and their obvious character weaknesses were done artfully. As the story unfolds the reader is spellbound (or at least I was) waiting to see what lie on the next page. It's a rough and tumble book and certainly not for everyone. The ending was disappointing, but at the same time mandatory as it left the reader wanting more. |
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| "On my Top List" | 2009-09-08 |
| - Reviewed By daisyelaine |
| Although I first read this book several years ago, I recently read it again. Despite the passing of 6 years, Mystic River still remains on the top of my list of favorite fiction. A heartbreaking tale, it's almost common place in real life sends a message to parents, children, and friends alike. In the blink of an eye a life can change and Lehane brings this point across time and time again in his portraying of the ties that bind. A true classic in the genre of modern day crime. |
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| "A River Of Dead Souls" | 2009-08-11 |
| - Reviewed By bartonmaru2 |
This book produced a fine film by Clint Eastwood and Oscar winning performances by Sean Penn and Timothy Buttons, together with a great cast.
The book is a dark appraisal of the human soul, and how it cannot transcend into something else. We are what we are. Although the lives of the lower middle-class has always been strained, Lehane's characters are always in a state of clinical depression, sometimes momentarily relieved by psychotic episodes, that produces a shred of dignity and relief for them. If this were a true representation of one of the trans-metropolitan areas of Boston, then you would be having suicides on a production line level. However, Lehane's people seem just a wee bit too lazy to kill themselves. This is an interesting twist on the class system, in which where you live determines your place in the world, and the characters actually believe it. And in this case, the neighborhood will kill you before it lets you go. There are no heroes waiting in the wings, or in the oily waters of the Mystic River. He has the style of leading up to a character preparing to do some-thing, halting, and giving a page (and half) of background, before continuing, this can be annoying, but then his breezy writing will get us back where he stopped before this tangential excursion. And it is in the amoral Jimmy "Flats" Marcus who turns out to be the most human of all the characters, and the most successful. Lehane has created a character of Shakespearean proportions in "Jimmy Flats," but this King Lear is a survivor, who recognizes his judgmental and emotional errors, lives with them, and moves into the future. Or we can go further back in time and compare Mystic River with Aeschylus' Agamemnon, with Jimmy as Clytaemestra, Katie as Iphigeneia, and Dave as an unwitting Aga-memnon, and even Val Savage as Aegisthus, who gloats over a murder. Lehane's writing is smooth and fast, in this dark book, about senseless dark crimes, giving birth to more of the same years later, that add more darkness to the characters' useless lives. If you have seen the film, you basically get the book, but this book is worth the reading. Lehane's narrative is strong as his story is unforgiving, he makes us think what other horrors lurk beneath the surface of the Mystic River.
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| "A must read" | 2009-05-28 |
| - Reviewed By compassion |
| This is a fantastic book! I am stunned that no one has reviewed it. Lehane has a talent for shading his characters like real human beings: the principal characters have both good and bad elements in them and are described in rich detail (which normally bores me). The movie is very good (with Sean Penn), but you must read this book! |
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 "Powerful" | 2009-04-17 |
| - Reviewed By ladyslott |
Three young boys from the mean streets of Boston lives are forever altered when one of them is abducted. Jimmy Marcus and Sean Devine did not get in the car with the two men who turned onto their street one day, but Dave Boyle did. Although Dave manages to escape from the pedophiles the friendship is never the same and all three men move on with their lives. Sean is now a police officer, Jimmy a reformed mobster who spends a few years in jail and changes when his wife dies while he is away, leaving him to raise their daughter Katie. Dave is married but hasn't done much with his life, still harboring the pain of his past. All three of these men's lives come together again when a teenaged Katie is murdered; Sean is the lead investigator, Jimmy is wracked by grief and guilt, and Dave becomes increasingly unraveled as many of his secrets become exposed.
Powerfully written with unforgettable and complex characters, this is one of the best suspense books I have read in a very long time. Each character seems so real they almost come off the page. You empathize with them; shake your head at their weaknesses but care about each one. The language is real, the situations are real and the question of morals and ethics is explored time and again. Good people do bad things; sometimes bad people can do good things, and there is a strong sense of karma throughout the book. The `what if' questions of making a different turn on a given day and the consequences are explored and the scars that are left on three boys as they mature into men is examined in their day by day reactions to Katie's death. |
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 "the good , the bad and the beautiful" | 2009-03-20 |
| - Reviewed By tftn@earthlink.net |
The boy who got in the car seems to be the theme of the novel.
Three boys grow up into men of very different types
and meet again due to a horrible murder of the bad one's beautiful daughter.
At the very start of this novel a comment about the boys developing a hate for chocolate candy due to their father's jobs rang false to me.
There is an amoral type slant to this novel
that bothers me.
There is the systematic assumption that the "broken" boy can't be fixed and will be a problem always ...
I think maybe that just accepting that assumption has flawed this novel? |
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