Book Review - Shatter Island

A few months ago I saw the trailer (or is it preview) for Shatter Island with Leanardo Dicaprio. I remember leaning over to my wife and whispering that I thought it looked great. She, who hates horrors, whisper back an extremely unconvincing and sarcastic, “Yeah.” Little did she know, I wasn’t being sarcastic. I knew at that moment I would not get to go see it. When you have a wife who hates horrors, and a three year old and a three month old i some movies must be passed over. Shatter Island was one such movie.

I few weeks ago I read a snippet in our local writing group’s newsletter about what a wonderful book Shatter Island was. How many stories take the reader up several flights of stairs, all the time the allowing the tension to mount. This author said that reading Shatter Island was like climbing stairs that were rickety, falling apart and constantly twisting and turning. This inspired me to read it. She was right. It was not only full of twists but also filled with some sparkling writing.

First, I thought it interesting, and I didn’t realize that this occurred till well after I finished the book, but the prologue is first person, the rest of the story third. I thought this was interesting since it gave the reader a peek into the main character, Teddy’s, psyche, then allowed you to watch his actions with that foundation. A couple of compelling and well written passages from that prologue:

“She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me, in the eyes of my more astute colleagues as bearing all characteristics of the classic melancholic.”

When I read that line I thought it was decent. It wasn’t until I read this next line several sentences later that I felt that the author had hit on something.

“I misplace things far too often these days, my glasses more than anything. My car keys. I enter stores and forget what I’ve come for, leave the theater with no recollection of what I’ve just seen. If time for me really is a series of bookmarks, then I feel as if someone has shaken the book and those yellowed slips of paper, torn matchbook covers and flatted coffee stirrers have fallen to the floor, and the dog-eared flaps have been pressed smooth."

Those passages seem to be setting the reader up for a chaotic and crazy rest of the story.

This next passage figured heavily throughout the book, and by the end of the story the mystery behind the man’s hands makes sense. I tagged it as soon as I read it not realizing that it would come up again. Bully for me for catching the foreshadowing. In actuality I just loved the metaphor.

“He was a bit stockier and a bit shorter than Teddy, maybe five ten or so, and he had a head of tight, curly black hair and olive skin and slim, delicate hands that seemed incongruous with the rest of him, as if he’d barrowed them until his real one came back from the shop.”

These next few metaphors too were quite well laid out, it again hits on the theme that things aren’t what they seem.

“Crawley’s smile returned, but it was a more vicious version, and it reminded Teddy of the film that formed over soup.”

“He leaned on the rail and looked at a sky the color of baby blue eyes.”

“Teddy turned from the books, watched Neahring glance at his glass, a silkworm of a smile twitching his soft mouth."

Despite the fact that I find groin to be an incredibly unfortunate sounding word, ranks right up there with “meal” on the grating on my nerves index, I thought that Lehane’s ability to inspire sexuality in this scene with this passage was quite well done.

“Oh, I do.” She sat up on the bed and tucked her legs underneath her, and Teddy felt her movements in his stomach and groin.”

I’ve written a few scenes that are supposed to inspire the same feelings in my characters and in my readers; an awkwardness around sexuality. When I read the above passage I thought that Lehane had accomplished what I tried to do to a far greater degree.

And, as Shatter Island is a horror, I thought the best passage in terms of setting the dark theme was the following:

“Her lips were slick with blood and spittle as she shrieked at him, shrieked like she’d seen all the century’s dead climb through her window and walk toward her bunk.”

The snippet I read in the newsletter was right, reading Shatter Island is like walking up a creaky, old, twisting staircase, and the ending is well worth the climb. Secondly, I no longer feel like I need to see the movie. Lehane does such a good job of creating mood, describing setting, and making his story and characters believable, that I feel as though I’ve already seen the movie.