Novel: Shutter Island

BUY NOW: Shuter Island”

Author Dennis Lehane

Grade: 68/100

U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them.

But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems.

And neither is Teddy Daniels.

Is he there to find a missing patient? Or is he there on his on accord, to find his wife’s killer and avenge her death? Are the experiments that are going on there unethical and is her there to shut them down? Are they on to him? Or is it Teddy that is the one losing his mind?

The novel is full of twists and turns, takes you in one direction only to hit the brakes, and whip the ride around. I know the type of writer that Dennis Lehane is, so I was expecting some twists and saw them coming, but were it written by someone else, I may not have expected this tangled web.

Teddy, his main character, is a complex character with a complex past. However, with all the trauma he has been through I expected to find more depth in both his personality and his voice throughout the story. I didn’t find too much of either. Besides the twist we find in him near the end, he was a pretty flat character. That is my only criticism of the novel.

The characters painted in the insane asylum were all very dark and rich and this gave a very ominous vibe to the place. If the intent was to make the island feel creepy, the writer succeeded with his cast of loonies, as well as the nefarious doctors.

I chose to review this novel because Scorsese made a film of it that has done very well.  Sadly, I believe the novel was done much better than the film, and typically I’m a big fan of Scorsese. The movie just didn’t carry the same weight as the novel, and the surprise ending felt way too obvious. However, this is a book review, and the novel is definitely worth reading. Ages 15-45.