Mystic River by Dennis Lehane Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Mystic River
Book Review: A Dark, Gripping Book
Summary: 5 Stars
East Buckingham a generation ago was a place of cramped corner stores and butcher shops with blood dripping off the carcasses in the windows. There was a right and a wrong side of town, sure as if the town had been separated by tracks, and Jimmy and Dave, who lived in the Flats, were from the wrong side. One day the boys were arguing with Sean, who came from the right side, when a car pulled up and two guys got out. They clamed they were cops, asked the boys, who were in the street in front of Sean's, if they were from the Flats. Jimmy lied, pointed to Sean's, said he lived there. Sean did too. Dave couldn't lie, so the men told him to get in the car, they were going to take him home.
Instead they took him to a cellar where the used and abused him until he managed to escape four days later. Dave's life was never the same, shunned by his classmates for something that hadn't been his fault, he turned bitter.
Years later Dave sees Jimmy's daughter drunk and dancing in a seedy neighborhood bar. She leaves, someone follows, she is slaughtered and that night Dave comes home covered in blood. He tells his wife he'd fought and bested a mugger, but she can tell he's lying. Sean, now a cop, is investigating the case. Dave's wife goes to Jimmy and tells, as she believes her husband is a murderer.
And everything points to Dave. That pent up rage, turning to revenge. Makes sense to Jimmy, and in the Flats you take care of your own, settle your own debts, right your own wrongs.
You won't burn your fingers ripping through the pages in "Mystic River." You won't finish it in one night either. You'll read slow, take in every word as Lehane draws you into the heads of his characters. You won't want to miss a thing, that would be criminal. You'll probably even find yourself rereading, the writing is that good. Lehane takes us down to the dark side of human nature, then takes us even deeper, so deep you wonder if you'll be infected, thank God, it's fiction.
Book Review: A Lifelong Tragedy
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a difficult book to read beccause of its content. A very good story with well-drawn characters. To sum it up, this is a modern day greek tragedy. The movie was great too.Book Review: A River Of Dead Souls
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: A Tale of Three Boys
Summary: 4 Stars
An academy-award winning movie based upon a phenomenal book. Three 11-year old boys are confronted by two men in a car while playing ball in the street in 1975, Sean Devine, daredevil Jimmy Marcus, and quiet, tag-along, Dave Boyle. Thinking the men were the police, the one man instructed Dave to get into the car so he could take him home to the Flats (poor section of Boston). Dave did as he was told only to be locked in a cellar and become the victim of child molesters. Dave escapes, and the boys go their separate ways only to be brought together again, twenty five years later, as the result of the murder of Jimmy's 19 year old daughter, Katie. Dave's trauma, resonated upon Sean and Jimmy, changes the course of their lives. As they struggle to find the real killer, their boyhood issues surface to become consequences of their actions. Mystic River is a story not to be ignored.Book Review: A book that lives up to the hype
Summary: 5 Stars
While I haven't seen the Oscar-nominated movie based on Lehane's book, the book itself is terrific. Three boys are forever changed when one of them, David Boyle, is abducted by two men at a young age. He returns days later but nothing remains the same. One of the boys, Jimmy, is a former criminal who's seemingly eager to get back into that world when his nineteen-year-old daughter Katie is murdered in a local park. David is immediately suspected, even by his wife, but the eventual revelation of the real killers is shocking. Meanwhile, Sean has become a detective and now faces the unpleasant task of possibly arresting David for Katie's murder and dealing with Jimmy's simmering rage. The descriptions of the neighborhoods are great and while some characters seem adrift in hopelessness, Lehane's writing elevates this story from thriller to literature. There are great descriptions of family, love, and home. An excellent book by all accounts, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Lehane's work.