BOOK REVIEW: Shutter Island

LOOK! It's a new feature! Literary Lundi, Lundi meaning Monday and Literary meaning...well, literary. If you don't know what that means, you really shouldn't be reading this blog. You should be coloring.

Anyways, today's discussion (or not so much, as I am talking and you are...well...not) is about Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. There are spoilers. Maybe. I don't know, I haven't written it yet. But there might be, and that is my point.

I read this book as part of the Nest Book Challenge. One of the Challenges (for 15 points, no less) was to read a book in a genre that I normally do not. What is something I do not read, other than Botany Books? Thrillers. Also Mysteries. Luckily enough, Shutter Island is a mixture of both.

By way of plot summary, Teddy Daniels, a US Marshall, and his new partner Chuck Aule are sent to investigate the disappearance of an inmate at Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane on the creepily named Shutter Island. As the story progresses, there is the mystery, not only of the missing inmate, but of the mysterious inmate 67 and of cruel and inhumane surgical experiments going down in the obligatory onsite lighthouse. The plot gets deeper as Teddy begins to question the motives of everyone around him and the likelihood that he will ever leave the island.

The story is intriguing and engrossing, and has almost no discernible plotholes. The story is imaginative and the plot twists and turns until you aren't quite sure who is on what side or, more importantly, whose side you are on. Unless you're good at anagrams, in which case you'll have it figured out within the first three chapters.
It does, however, make you want to sit facing any and all entrances to your home, as, about three chapters in, the fear of criminally insane women with cleavers starts to infiltrate your mind. It's not scary, per say (perse? purse hay?), but there is a definite skin-crawl factor, and while it doesn't necessarily keep you guessing, it isn't quite as easy to figure out as it could potentially be, and for that, I must give it points. Not real ones, obviously, but the shiny imaginary kind, which incidentally, would work out fine for the subjects of the story

It's not a difficult read, and it is definitely worth a look. It took me about four hours of solid reading, simply because I didn't want to put it down.

Also, for the record, Dennis Lehane looks like the biggest creeper ever on the back cover. Just a thought.