Fiction and such

[ksmith]

One thing that this LJ posting does is make me change out the CDs regularly. I have been known to listen to the same one over and over and over, especially when it's a case of simply needing background noise rather than wanting to listen to specific music.

Finished Dennis Lehane's SHUTTER ISLAND last night--has anyone else read it? If so, what did you think? I have to admit that I felt let down. The PW review was a rave, and online reviews were good as well. Read no further if you haven't read SI and want to...

...unreliable narrators. It dawns on you eventually that you're dealing with one here. At first you think it's due to external factors that are beyond the narrator's control. Then you learn otherwise. Many sojourns into dream state and unreality that became a bit much after a while.

Then came the ending, which PW found so shattering. It's a twist. If you've read enough genre fic, you've seen similar endings. What irked me was the hopelessness, what I felt was the unfairness to the character. I can understand the author's point, and in some ways why he choose the ending that he did. It's still enough of a letdown that I doubt I will ever pick up the book again. I felt the same way after reading WAR OF THE RATS, a tale of dueling snipers during the Seige of Leningrad. Adventure takes a sharp turn into devastation and hopelessness before finally augering in to complete and utter Literary let's-see-how-really-really-depressing-we-can-be. I can understand how compelling these endings can be from the author side of the pen. On the reader side, though, there's a feeling of wait-a-minute? that's it? What just happened here? Well...shit. Not entirely satisfactory, iow.

What else could it be with the Lehane book? Maybe the realization that the poor bastard never had a chance to begin with, and that the events in the book just bore that out. Long ride ending nowhere.

Good aspects of the book. Good pacing. Lehane is a very spare writer, using very little detail to describe a character or set a scene, yet managing to evoke complete pictures nevertheless. Does menace and mistrust well.

I should probably read MYSTIC RIVER. I haven't seen the movie, so my perceptions won't be altered in any way. The guy sells through the roof--must be a reason.

Back in Suburbia, I mowed the backyard after dinner. Storms expected tonight, which means even more rain. Once more I'll be able to hear the grass grow.

Or maybe it will just be the voices in my head again, telling me to go out to the garage and pry off the last panel from that hidden compartment...

Just kidding. No hidden compartments in the garage.

Can't speak for the attic yet, however.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Hidden compartment!

I have a secret closet... twenty feet of secret closet!

[trolleypup.livejournal.com]

I have a formerly hidden turret space on one corner of my room. In fact, over the years I have poked into every hidden space here with a volume over a cubic yard. So there is not much that is hidden...the hidden spaces are really just access to behind the walls.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

The guy sells through the roof--must be a reason.

Not to denigrate this author in any way....but my cousin used to be married to a very sweet girl who read whatever was on the bestseller list, in hopes of improving her mind. (She was a little intimidated by so many college graduates in my family, plus I had just sold my first book...)

Since editors and booksellers decide who is on that list, I occasionally have this flash of a gigantic shell game going on around us....

I used to have a hidden closet behind a revolving staircase. We had to give up the hidden room in the new house--a 3/4 bath is going in--but perhaps we'll build another one? %^)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I remember when I was little--3 or 4, maybe 5--my folks and I would go for rides. I'd sit in the back of the car and watch the passing scenery.

We were still in NY State at the time. I forgot where we used to go, but we drove through the country to get where we were going, and we'd pass this tiny house built near the side of the road, in a field. Tiny as in a doll's house. Small. Not many features--I recall the little front door with iirc a window on either side. We'd all look for it--spotting it became the high point of the trip for me. I may have wondered who lived in such a tiny house--I think I recall talking about it. It's been 40 years though. Hard to say.

I don;t know whether it was someone's idea of an interesting way to house some utility station, or what. It was just this tiny house on the side of the road. We never stopped to see what was inside.

Built memories....

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

My father built a darling playhouse for his three daughters, with small windows properly sized, winterized (windows snapped shut) the works. Mom decorated it with antiques (that a neighbor boy playing monster promptly damaged) and it later became her gardening shed. She couldn't keep the neighborhood kids out of it, and was worried about liability, so they gave it away--so my niece and nephew never got to play in it!

It is probably one of those tiny mystery houses out in the woods somewhere....