Christina Reviews *Mystic River* by Dennis Lehane

           "Dave wondered where the hell he was going to live if the frontier mentality rolled the frontier right over him (Lehane, 48)."

         Mystic River is very well-written and I'd heard that about...oh, a million and a half times before I decided to read it, knowing full well I'd despise the subject matter. I actually rather enjoyed it while reading it though there were times when it got to me. To this day it is my favorite Dennis Lehane book. This is a good book to read if you keep in mind what it's about before you pick it up. It doesn't fall into cliches of what you would expect from such a story. For example, it's no Sleepers, and I wish people would stop comparing the two. They're nothing alike for so many different reasons that I can't even begin to describe. I hated Sleepers, and when I say hate, I mean it. I'm not talking "It gave me nightmares" hated.  Anyway, don’t go into this book expecting more of what you got in the Angie and Patrick novels. It’s different. Better.

      Here's a brief summary: 

      Three friends go separate ways after one is kidnapped and molested and returns home forever changed. They grow up and the daughter of one of the now distant friends is murdered. The kidnapped friend, Dave, is a suspect for various reasons, one of which happens to be that he is a survivor of child abuse, but mostly because he was seen in the same places as the victim, at the same time, and has a poor alibi.

       The story is told from the points of view of the dead girl’s father Jimmy, the suspect and childhood kidnap victim Dave, the cop friend Sean, Dave’s wife Celeste, the dead girl’s boyfriend, and we even go into the head of the dead girl, Katie, for a few pages. I’m not going to say much more about the plot because I don’t want to spoil it, but suffice it to say that the story is quite compelling, and that is in large part due to the great dialogue and the terrific characterizations.

       The dialogue in Mystic River is great, the internal dialogue as well. I've found that the series was more about sharp dialogue and twisted plots rather than anything else. There are great characters in the series but nothing like in Mystic River. The characters in this book (all of them) are fascinating. There's the central character Jimmy who's dealing with the loss of his oldest daughter, there's his second wife Annabeth who’s quite tough and is supposed to be modeled a little after Lady Macbeth, there are her brothers---the Savage brothers---who are basically like the city's mafia. Then there's Dave, "the boy who escaped from wolves."  He's scarred by his childhood and is afraid that he will turn into the very kind of person who destroyed him. Then there's the cop Sean who is the third friend. He just recently separated from his wife who calls him up and says nothing but for some reason he knows that she’s the one breathing on the other end of the line.

           Don't read this for the who-dunnit aspect because you will probably be disappointed. Read it for the characters, the gritty atmosphere, the dialogue and the prose. This book has a lot to do with karma, survivor guilt, shame, lost innocence, silence. There's a sort of religious theme too, the murder taking place on the victim's sister's First Communion. And then there's a baptismal aspect what with the river and "We bury our sins here, we wash them clean".  And it's about gentrification.

         This novel is like a dark river, with all the meaning hidden within its depths.  Does that sound pretentious and dumb?  Just read the book.