Shutter Island

by Dennis Lehane

2004

Status

Available

Publication

HarperTorch (2004), Edition: Reprint, 400 pages

Description

Fiction. Mystery. Thriller. Historical Fiction. HTML: The basis for the blockbuster motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island by New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane is a gripping and atmospheric psychological thriller where nothing is quite what it seems. The New York Times calls Shutter Island, "Startlingly original." The Washington Post raves, "Brilliantly conceived and executed." A masterwork of suspense and surprise from the author of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, Shutter Island carries the reader into a nightmare world of madness, mind control, and CIA Cold War paranoia and is unlike anything you've ever read before..

Media reviews

Moving out from the working-class Boston neighborhoods where his hard-boiled private eyes and blue-collar cops normally conduct their realistic business, Dennis Lehane takes a leap into unknown genre territory in SHUTTER ISLAND (Morrow, $25.95). But whichever genre he's aiming for in this misguided
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effort -- psychological suspense, cold war thriller or Grand Guignol melodrama -- he misses it by a nautical mile.
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3 more
The primary force of this book comes from Teddy's grief and his anguished memories of World War II, when he helped liberate inmates at Dachau. ... But its hidden power has a different source: Mr. Lehane's insight into his book's most disturbed figures. Suffice it to say that this is a deft,
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suspenseful thriller that unfolds with increasing urgency until it delivers a visceral shock in its final moments. When it comes to keeping readers exactly where he wants them, Mr. Lehane offers a bravura demonstration of how it's done.
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Lecturalia
Verano de 1954. El agente federal Teddy Daniels llega a Shutter Island, isla en la que está ubicado el hospital Ashecliffe, un centro penitenciario para enfermos mentales. Junto con su compañero, Chuck Aule, se propone encontrar a una paciente desaparecida, una asesina llamada Rachel Solando, a
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medida que un huracán azota la isla. No obstante, nada es lo que parece en el hospital Ashecliffe. Y Teddy Daniels tampoco.¿Ha ido hasta allí para encontrar a una paciente desaparecida? ¿O le han enviado para investigar los rumores acerca de los radicales métodos psiquiátricos que se utilizan en esa institución? Unos métodos que posiblemente incluyan la experimentación con drogas, pruebas quirúrgicas terribles, contraataques mortales en la guerra encubierta en contra de los lavados de cerebro soviéticos...
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Lehane takes a departure form his regular series and takes us to Shutter Island. This is a book that stretched both the author and the reader. Lehane called his book, homage to gothic, but also homage to B Movies and Pulp!" Teddy is on Shutter Island to find a missing mental patient. As you
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travel with Teddy the story becomes more and more about Teddy than about the missing mental patient. The job of the reader is to decide what is real and what is make-believe as you travel with the main character Teddy. You hear the whispering echoes of the past as you find more and more clues. All illusions of control and all surefooted terrain ware away as you get deeper and deeper into the twists of the story. The context of the book has been written once, and then written completely anew, and then twisted once again the third go around of writing this twisted tale. The story line however stays constant and helps one misunderstand the novel. You will read yourself to a knotted rope, for the author has left enough chords to twist around your neck and hang yourself by. Breathing becomes something you need to remind yourself to do as you get caught up in the current of Shutter Island. The story looks at mental health treatments of the past compared to what methods are used today. Lehane asks his readers, "What is the fine line between treatment and sterilization of the mind? Enjoy the twisted mind of Dennis Lehane in his book Shutter Island, A definite cluck cluck cluck.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member clackermuffin
A load of hoary old bollocks. There's nary an original idea on offer here. It's full of melodrama, cardboard characters and unintentionally funny bits, but I did manage to finish it.
LibraryThing member BlackSheepDances
I loved the book Mystic River, so much so I reread it once I finished it. I refused to see the movie because I didn't want to be disappointed. Time has passed, so I gave in and watched it recently. I didn't love it but damn, Sean Penn did exactly personify the main character as I imagined. Wow.
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Gave me chills.

I picked up Shutter Island recently by the same author, Dennis Lehane, and didn't realize it was being made into a movie (apparently coming out soon) until I'd started it. Bugged me a little, as I like to picture my own characters and since the movie trailer showed Leo Dicaprio and Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley Jr., well, I was stuck picturing them. But, whether it is visualizing them or not, SHEESH this is a good book. I can't turn the pages fast enough. It is a super fast read too, not as complex as Mystic River but still deep.

It's so Hitchcock-y in the suspense...I literally had the hair on my neck stand up at one point. This would be a perfect beach read if summer weren't winding down. I'll have it finished today, and am actually putting it off because then it will be over. Will I see the movie? Hmmm.
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LibraryThing member kateiyzie
Two marshals go to an island off the West coast housing criminally insane inmates. The isolation, location, stormy weather, and a major plot twist made this a big favorite.
LibraryThing member jrtanworth
Although most readers have rated this book high, I found the underlying premise untenable. The writing style is effective, and shutter island is certainly a creepy place, but the novel loses its steam when the story story behind the curtain is revealed.
LibraryThing member daisygrl09
Page turning with great plot twist at the end.
LibraryThing member cappybear
A fast paced, clever novel, not so much a who dunnit as a whodidwhat, with strong characterisation and intelligent dialogue. The author builds up the suspense until the end, and writes about the relationship between Teddy and Dolores with great senstivity. Not the sort of book I normally read, but
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I'm glad I did.
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LibraryThing member k8seren
Wow what a perfect thriller. Dark, twisty, impossible to put down. A fast, engrossing read. Perfect for when you're trapped inside on a rainy day. Highly recommended.
LibraryThing member jenforbus
In Shutter Island, Teddy Daniels, a US Marshall, and his new partner Chuck Aule are headed to Shutter Island to investigate an escape. Shutter Island houses Ashecliffe Hospital, an asylum for the mentally insane who have committed violent crimes, and a female patient/inmate has escaped and is
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running loose on the island. But Teddy Daniels has an alternate reason for taking the assignment. He has learned through a twist of fate, that the man who set fire to his apartment complex, killing Teddy's wife, is housed in this very same institution. Teddy has managed to convince a senator that unethical research on humans is taking place here, so Teddy is given the recovery assignment so he can come in and covertly find evidence of this practice. Teddy is determined to find his wife's killer and exact his own justice - ethical or otherwise.

Dennis Lehane NEVER ceases to amaze me with the gift he has. He evokes so much emotion from his readers...simply by the way he strings his words together to make sentences and paragraphs. For example, right off the bat in the prologue the reader is painted this incredible picture:

"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 flattened coffee stirrers have fallen to the floor, and the dog-eared flaps have been pressed smooth."

Later in the novel, Rachel says, "...the dreams often stringing together and piggybacking off one another until they come to resemble a novel written by Picasso."

A novel written by Picasso? Who can't imagine that? And every person's image is going to be different, but they are all going to be "abstract."

Both of these quotes epitomize the utter chaos of the insane mind. And in a way, the whole book epitomizes the insane mind. But when you come to the conclusion, it isn't chaos at all; it's a well-formed, intricately layered plot. Every element works significantly and essentially with every other element.

The other looming theme in this book is violence. Is violence truly bad? Or is it an element of us all as the Warden impresses upon Teddy?

"God's gift...His violence...God loves violence...Why else would there be so much of it? It's in us. It comes out of us. It is what we do more naturally than we breathe. We wage war. We burn sacrifices. We pillage and tear at the flesh of our brothers. We fill great fields with our stinking dead. And why? To show Him that we've learned from His example...God gives us earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. He gives us
mountains that spew fire onto our heads. Oceans that swallow ships. He gives us nature, and nature is a smiling killer. He gives us disease so that in our death we believe He gave us orifices only so that we could feel our life bleed out of them. He gave us lust and fury and greed and our filthy hearts. So that we could wage violence in His honor. There is no moral order as pure as this storm we've just seen. There is no moral order at all. There is only this - can my violence conquer yours?"

A savage hurricane is the backdrop for the four days of this novel, providing the evidence of Nature's violence. And Teddy comes to the island as a peace-keeper, a law enforcer. But he has a hidden agenda to avenge his wife. Is the warden really that far off base? And in a time when we are in a perpetual state of war ourselves, how can we deny his belief? Aren't we as a people illustrating just that?

If having a phenomenal plot wasn't enough, the character development is outstanding. The range of emotion I felt for Dr. Crawley and Chuck was a range I've rarely experienced with reading. And one I've NEVER experienced with stage or screen performances. Teddy will in all likelihood have to be added to my list of favorite characters. The depth of Teddy's character comes out in his own internal conflict, in his reaction to external conflict and it even comes out through other characters. I cannot detail much more than that without giving spoilers aways, so I'll leave characterization at that.

Despite my raves about the plot and characters, there was one element that was even better...the perspective. Lehane gave this book the perfect voice. It wouldn't have been as suspenseful any other way.

In Shutter Island, I felt big bear arms wrap around me and pull me in; I could not put this book down. Every time I thought I started to grasp what was going on, a new twist evolved. And it wasn't a twist that made you think, "oh pahleeeaze! can he go any more overboard?" It was a twist that made you think, "Holy Cow! I didn't even see that coming, but it was there!" His twists are so convincing and so amazingly weaved into the fabric of the plot, that you start to be on guard. When the conclusion actually started to play out, I was still waiting for another twist. Isn't that what suspense is supposed to be about?

This novel is nothing short of fabulous! A movie version is in the works for 2009. If you haven't already, get out and read this book BEFORE Hollywood butchers it. No movie would be capable of doing Lehane's work justice on this book. It will most definitely make my top 10 for 2008.
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LibraryThing member Schmerguls
This 2003 novel is laid in Massachusetts. and starts off wih Teddy and his partner going to the hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island to see why a patient has disappeared. One is led to believe the people running the hospital are the bad guys but eventually it appears that some of
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the sane people are not so sane. This is an interesting thought, but I felt the author jerked me around and never cleared up what the true situation was. In non-fiction one is prepared to accept that a mystery may not definitively be cleared up but fiction should not leave the true situation unapparent at the end. So this book did not impress me. When I finish a novel the true situation should be clear. I think I know what the true situation was in this novel but of course since novels are not true, who knows?
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LibraryThing member catesharris
I literally could not put this book down. I was walking around the airport reading it! I love the suspense and the emotional roller coster of the characters.
LibraryThing member sturlington
At first, I didn’t get into this novel. The story seemed a bit too out there for me to swallow, too reminiscent of an old-timey Vincent Prince horror movie. But then Lehane threw me a plot twist that I completely didn’t expect, and that changed everything. I don’t want to give it away, but
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Shutter Island ended up being one of the creepiest books I have read in a long time.
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LibraryThing member pussreboots
Among book bloggers there seems to be two schools of thought on books to movies: read the book first or see the movie first. I fall into a third school — the "oh hey, this movie came from a book, who knew?" Which is pretty sad, considering I'm both a book blogger and a librarian, and a former
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film student. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane is is one of my most recent "discoveries" after watching the film twice in short succession.

If you're wondering what the book is about — it's basically the movie, save for a few minor tweaks to better show rather than tell. If you haven't seen the movie — it's about an escaped convict running loose on a high security island and the two U.S. Marshals who are there to track her down in the middle of a raging hurricane.

As with any story involving a creepy, old, mental institution — whether occupied or not — there's bound to be mysterious happenings afoot. Cinematically, this goes all the way back to The Cabinet of Caligari. In either form — book or film — Shutter Island is firmly rooted in that tradition.

Although there is a twist (and there's always a twist), to the observant and genre savvy, there are clues sewn throughout the novel. As I listened to the book in audio, some of those clues weren't as obvious as they would have been in print form.
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LibraryThing member BillPilgrim
Shutter Island is located way off the coast of Boston. It's only residents are the staff and patients at a hospital for the criminally insane. Federal Marshal Teddy Daniels arrives by ferry with his new partner, Chuck Aule. It takes place in 1954. They have been sent to investigate the
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disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando, who mysteriously vanished from her locked cell, and then gets past several checkpoints without being noticed. Teddy suspects that she had help, and he and Chuck are suspicious of the authorities of the hospital, who are not fully cooperative, and who do not seem that interested in finding Rachel or figuring out how she escaped. Teddy is also suspicious that the doctors at the hospital are conducting illegal experiments on the patients in a high security lighthouse building on the island. He is also looking for and planning to kill Andrew Laeddis, who started a fire in an apartment building that resulted in Teddy's wife's death from smoke inhalation.

I enjoyed the book greatly. I was quite taken with the story and its characters. It is easy reading and goes quickly. The plot is cleverly constructed, right down to its conclusion. I don't want to give too much away, but I was not expecting the ending that Lahane takes us to. But, it all makes perfect sense.
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LibraryThing member sensitivemuse
There's always something about asylums that have always given off an uncomfortable feeling. The way Lehane writes in this novel really expresses the uneasiness and queasiness about asylums and how an outsider would feel when first entering one. He does a real great job creating the mood and
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setting. It's bleak. It's dark. It's gives off an omnious feeling that by the middle of the book you're starting to doubt yourself and you're not sure what's real and what's not. You feel what Teddy feels. It's done really well and does a good job enticing you to read further, to get you to want to explore the asylum and join Teddy in his journey to find this missing patient. Suspecion is placed on everybody and you the feeling of mistrust starts to build throughout the book.

The plot is filled with twists and turns. It engages you to help solve the puzzles, and once you start thinking you're one step closer to solving the case, another twist is thrown in and you're back to square one. It's not frustrating. It's actually more exciting and every twist puts you into shock. I was especially shocked during the last few parts of the book. This is definitely a page turner. There a few dream sequences from Teddy that you might find strange (almost like an acid trip) but they're almost comparable to something you might find on the show Twin Peaks. They're just strange but it does fit the book quite nicely.

Character wise, I think the main focus would be on Teddy himself. The rest of the characters are very secondary and even his partner, Chuck, is flat. The main character development falls on Teddy and when you see what really happens to him, you're left speechless and literally dumbfounded. He may be your typical US Marshal on a case on the outside, but inside he has a lot of skeletons in his closet that you eventually discover as the story progresses.

The only criticism I would have at this book is, it is a little predictable. I've seen a lot of movies end this way and it seems to be the trend (I'm not sure if books are like this as well). However the ending suits the book so I'm willing to let it go. There is mild language and talk of frontal lobotomies in detail which may be not suiting for some.

Overall a really good book and suitable for a dark rainy windy day. Really creepy and a wonderful psychological thriller with a lot of twists and turns to keep the reader occupied. Don't mind the typical cliche ending, it's actually suitable and worth the read. It's amazing how much more scary asylums are than an average horror movie.
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LibraryThing member kraaivrouw
I am a huge fan of Dennis Lehane's work. I discovered him through and absolutely loved his series featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angela Genarro (begin with A Drink Before the War. This is a wonderful series featuring characters who are as real as gets - warm, tough, intelligent, heartbreaking. In
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this series Lehane manages to create honest character-driven detective novels that are true to their genre, but whose writing is a step above the ordinary.

Then he wrote Mystic River and all the rules for evaluating Lehane changed. Mystic River is novel with images and moments that haunt me to this day, so much so that they sometimes turn up in my dreams.

Next came this book, Shutter Island, a wonderful take on traditional Gothic themes - the decaying asylum for the criminally insane, a woman in peril, evil doctors performing deadly experiments, a hurricane cutting our heroes off from communication - it's big and pulpy and reads like some of the great video games in this genre play (I'm thinking specifically of The Suffering - one of the scariest games I've ever played that has a similar setting).

Lehane has said that Shutter Island is what happens when the Bronte sisters meet Invasion of the Body Snatchers and I think that's as good a description of the book as any I can come up with. This was a re-read for me. I loved it the first time, but I remember finishing it with a vague feeling of "what the hell was that" so when I saw the previews for the movie I knew I had to re-read it before I watched it. It's interesting to re-read the book because the structure of it is more apparent once you already know what's happening - so it's a completely different and just as satisfying experience. And that, I think, is key - that the book still holds up and is still suspenseful and just plain fun even when you know what's going on.

Lehane is a really great writer and, although I didn't like his last book (A Given Day) as much as some of his others I thoroughly enjoyed it - can't wait to see what he'll write next!
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LibraryThing member robwroy
I originally saw the movie first. not knowing it was a book. So I went out and picked it up. I loved everything about this book, it was a page-turner to me. I read it quickly, and I usually don't read books so quickly so thats saying something for me. At the end of the book (even though I knew how
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it ended) I yelled.. "OOOOHHHS***T!!!" hahaha. I highly recommend anyone read this book.
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LibraryThing member JechtShot
Welcome to Shutter Island; a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane where a patient has managed to escape confinement undetected. U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels and his partner are sent to investigate this mysterious disappearance, but things are not what they seem as the story unfolds. Dennis
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Lehane has crafted a delicious mystery that will be keep you guessing until you turn the final page. An extremely fast read and highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member themulhern
If the final ending is the "true" ending the book is kind of precious and pointless. Sort of light but with really bad stuff thrown in to give it an illusion of meaning.
LibraryThing member michanne
Excellent crime thriller with twists and turns throughout.
LibraryThing member thebigmg
This is the first book from Lehane that I read and it has made me go out and buy the rest of his books. Like his other book I have read the story is fairly simple but goes in odd or surprising directions (even though the end was not that difficult to see coming).
The highlight of the book is the
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characters and their interactions and Lehane's ability to make them feel like real people. The setting is creepy and the story continues equally creepy and disturbing moments right up to the end.
I can't wait to see what Scorsese and Leo can do with the book as a movie. 93/100
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LibraryThing member grheault
Set in Boston Harbor Islands. Setting pleased me because I have been around and on the islands, and was able to imagine the story quite vividly. Believable, good guy, bad guy characters, just enough action, twisted psychology. I found the last chapters to be the most teasing and I delighted in the
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reality/unreality jerk around. Ambiguous, surprise endings excellent. Just enough local detail to render it frighteningly authentic.
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LibraryThing member sjmccreary
US Marshall Teddy Daniels is sent to Shutter Island to investigate a report of a missing patient at the Ashcroft Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It soon becomes apparent that each person involved in the case has his own hidden agenda. We are left not knowing who to believe or trust. There are
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many twists and turns as, bit by bit, the truth is finally revealed.

There are several gruesome descriptions of experimental psychiatric treatments in the mid-1950's (when this story takes place), but no actual instances of such treatments taking place. The author does a nice job of providing hints without revealing the ending too soon. All essential pieces of the "solution" were present all along, visible to anyone who can see them and put them together. I was able to figure out only one piece in advance, but it wasn't the main part, which was a very satisfying surprise.
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LibraryThing member Joycepa
In 1954, Teddy Daniels, a US Marshal from the Boston office, steps off the ferry at Shutter Island with his new partner, Chuck Aule. Their objective: to investigate the disappearance of a patient from the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Rachel Solando murdered her three children, and
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has been committed to the hospital since. Suddenly, she has disappeared under impossible conditions: from a locked cell on a floor under constant surveillance, managing to get outside the hospital despite numerous checkpoints.

The investigation becomes more and more bizarre, with Daniels and Aule confronting increasingly disturbing circumstances. At last, in an effort to escape the Island, Daniels has a final confrontation.

That’s a fair description of the plot and does not even begin to do it justice. The book starts out almost lackadaisical; it doesn’t seem to be going much of anywhere in terms of the kind of thriller for which Lehane is famous. But little by little, the tension mounts until the final pages of the book when the true horror of the situation is revealed.

While not complete by any means, this is a glimpse also into the ‘psychaitric wars’ fought in the mid-50s among those who wished to surgically treat violent patients rendering them harmless through lobotomies, those who believed in a pharmacological approach, and those who hoped that working through the patients’ private agonies would provide a basis for a return to some sort of sanity.

This is not the usual thriller, but then Lehane is not the usual thriller writer. An excellent book. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member CarmenOhio
Another by one of the best writers today! And this novel has an ending readers won't see coming.
LibraryThing member Gary10
Takes awhile to get under way but quite a satisfying twist near the end. Lehane has the genre down pat.

Awards

Anthony Award (Nominee — Novel — 2004)
Barry Award (Nominee — Novel — 2004)
Hammett Prize (Nominee — 2003)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2003

Physical description

400 p.; 4.19 inches

ISBN

9780380731862

Barcode

1601902

Other editions

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