The Two-Sentences-and-One-Word Review of Shutter Island

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Before I'd read Mystic River, and before I'd circled around after that to read "Until Gwen" and then almost gave up writing because of Lehane's startlingly effective use of second person there (and if you haven't read that short story yet, get to it right now and right here), and long before I ever saw the movie Martin Scorsese made from this book, I read Shutter Island.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times a book fools me, or makes me flip back and check what's come before, or makes me smile till it hurts when I find out that - yup - all the pieces are there in front of me, and the book that's the best among those few is this one, which so thoroughly builds and then just as thoroughly deconstructs not one but two realities.

Masterful.

View all my reviews