Mystic River - Dennis Lehane Review

There are threads in our lives.
You pull one and everything else gets affected.

This book is not what I expected, at times it's slow and not a lot happens but then suddenly everything happens at once and by the end you realise you're sitting with your back as rigid as a flag pole and you really need to pee.

Almost every character within this book is crafted beautifully, you don't always like them, they don't always say the right thing, and they certainly don't remain the same static two dimensional images you begin with. They sometimes piss you off, make you upset, and at times really fucking furious. 

I don't think I was very fond of any of the characters by the end but I developed a strange attachment to them, like a relative you don't get on well with but still care about. That's why the ending is so poignant. 

The plot slowly unravels itself, it is almost a good two hundred pages in before Jimmy Marcus's daughter's body is found and the reader knows for a long time before that that she's dead. It is at times too slow, I became frustrated and started losing interest but stuck with it and I'm glad I did. Part of me enjoys that the book is not all about the murder and more about the lives of the three men we start out with and everyone whose lives they touch. It's about loss and coming to terms with your less appealing attributes. It questions our idea of justice. It challenges what we consider evil.

Lehane has a way of describing people and places that you can almost imagine the smell, dirt under nails and in hair, small unattractive facial tics and involuntary twitches. You are drawn in by the realism and stay for the answers.
I greatly recommend this book.

Now the Film

In 2003 Clint Eastwood directed an adaptation of the novel. I seen this film before I read the book, I seen it years ago though so quite a bit of it was lost to the fog of my memory banks. I enjoyed the film the first time I seen it, it inspired me to read the book; granted I took my time to get around to it.

Left to right: Dave, Sean and Jimmy.
Someone please explain how a ginger kid grows up
to be a dark haired Sean Penn with grey temples.

Watching the film now I appreciate the amount of dialogue taken straight from the book, the attention to detail events and almost recreate the characters without too much altercation. There are however small things that now bother me about the film. Almost all of the subtle humour and wit of Lehane is gone, granted Clint Eastwood's films usually do focus on the serious.
Fond moments in the book are completely altered in the adaptation and some characters lose their likeability in exchange to put emphasis on another aspect of their personality. Annabeth for instance is simplified into a cold, 'hard' woman; which is partly how she is described in the book but on occasions in the film where she rejects her cousin Celeste, I can't help feel angry that she is now two dimensional, that had they been true to the book Annabeth would have moments of weakness, have need of her family and appreciate their love. It's funny, when I bought the book the woman that sold it to me asked if I had seen the film and commented on the Ice Queen that took the place of Jimmy's wife.

Annabeth isn't the only victim to lose the majority of their emotional range. Sean is a complex character in the book that loses a lot of his emotional integrity in the film. In the film he's a man that is separated from his wife but remains loyal. In the book he's a man whose wife left him and struggles with the knowledge that he might have a child and that he might not want that child. Sean also has a lot more anger and regret in the novel, regret for never having a beer with Dave; for not being a better friend and anger that Jimmy is exactly the same "crazy, lunatic, fucking psycho piece of shit" he was when he was a kid.
Dave is the most interesting character in the book, you like him, you pity him, you're sickened by him but you understand him. The film leaves out a lot of his sweet nature, instead of being that person who tries too hard to be your friend he's shy and awkward. He is simply awkward Dave and the Boy. Not Dave who grew up and has a kid and a wife who he loves deeply and the Boy who wants to furiously have his revenge on the world. The film only glimpses Dave the wolf. This I feel is a crime but having not read the book the first time, I was satisfied so for the film alone it is not a flaw.

For a number of reasons I feel the film does not have the same poignancy that novel does, but that is the usual way and I still really enjoyed the film. I think there is only one more thing that bothers me though... 

Left to right: Jimmy - Sean Penn. Sean - Kevin Bacon.

I'm under the impression that there is a small minority of women who find Kevin Bacon sexy, and an even smaller minority within that minority who would describe his voice as "like whiskey and wood smoke". I'm well aware that it's ridiculous to expect perfection but I'm a woman with a fetish for detectives and part of me wanted an actor to play Sean that could live up to the quote from our friend Dave, "Fuck Sean. And those eyes of his. And that voice. And the way you could see the women in the kitchen all but drop their panties when he came in the room". Kevin Bacon leaves me bitterly disappointed. Sorry Kev.

Devon x

Doubting Me

Doubting I'll ever be a musical sensation or a world renowned brain surgeon is just being realistic but doubting myself in general is becoming a real problem. Before I became ill I was confident and enthusiastic about near enough everything I tried; now there's a constant tiny doubt living in the back of mind with an obsession with cheese on toast and a television turned up to max volume.

It's a constant distraction and it's effecting my writing. I doubt my basic writing skills, my imagination, my ability to create convincing characters and environments. I doubt my own voice. What if I'm not great? What if attempting to write another novel is like me trying to climb a mountain all by myself? What if I never see the view from the top?

Then I realised all that is irrelevant, that everything I do is good enough for me; that climbing a mountain doesn't happen overnight. I may not be the greatest writer ever born, of my generation or even of my fucking star sign but that's not what I want to be, I want to be the author of my own stories, be the creator of my own characters and worlds; even if they are considered contrived by some and my name is mentioned in the same sentence as the word "Hack".

It could be worse, one morning I could wake up and regret never trying because I was afraid I'd fail, that I never gave myself the chance to be great because I gave up.

Pronounce that for me 

Devon x