Dennis Lehane – Shutter Island
Released as a film this week by ‘America’s greatest living director’ Martin Scorsese with Leonardo Dicaprio in the lead role, Shutter Island is a complex and intriguing mystery thriller which is dark, unpredictable and steadfastly unconventional. The novel takes place in 1954, as federal marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule search for escaped murderess Rachel Solando. The novel is set predominantly in Ashcliffe hospital (a hospital for the criminally insane) on Shutter Island, an island not far from Boston. Matters are complicated however, by a developing mystery within the island, Solando having been capable of escaping a locked room and clues of cryptic codes being examples. Matters are not helped by elements reminding the central character of Teddy of a previous lost love and nightmarish Second World War experiences.
The novel eschews the traditional narrative conventions of the mystery novel. Whilst the mystery of Rachel Solando remains very much at the core of the book, Lehane breeds an atmosphere of fear and distrust which renders the staff of Ashcliffe a strange and untrustworthy presence. The staff being a backdrop to the federal marshals investigation, they nevertheless prove very manipulative and chilling. Crucially for the originality of the novel, it never goes for a comforting standard template of a murder mystery, it creates a world in which conventional instruments of law and peacekeeping are undermined and subject to corruption and deep secrecy. This adds a further layer of depth when considering the setting of the novel’s Cold War context undoubtedly reflected by the festering paranoia of the main character.
Furthermore, the text weaves great amounts of ‘recent’ historical events and societal changes into its 1954 setting. Reflections of Teddy Daniel’s previous role in liberating a Nazi concentration camp are highlighted by some of the sinister going’s on in the hospital. Drugging experiments upon the insane and bizarre and horrific scientific exercises lend the novel a haunting and terrifying power.
One of the greatly commendable aspects of the book is a brilliant twist towards its end. Indeed, if Scorsese executes and commits to this element; it will be a terrific achievement. The twist has an impact which even justifies a second read and questions many of the supposedly ‘real’ aspects of the novel. Whilst many consider the ending to be very bewildering, I find it a satisfying and fundamentally logical conclusion.
Though the greatest merits of the piece are arguably Lehane’s skill in evoking an authentic setting that is simultaneously original yet derived from other works of popular fiction. The opening chapter in particular skillfully evokes the surreal and wasteful nature of the island. “Like a carless smudge of pain against the sky.” Lehane brilliantly creates a world in which human life is easily threatened and expertly foreshadows the darkness of the setting. But Lehane also goes further than poetic discourse and terrifically borrows from 1950s cinematic and film noir conventions. The fast talking Bostonian Teddy Daniels for example expertly cements Lehane’s original influences and is a terrific homage to the entertainments of the time within the 1950s setting. The novel is an astounding revitalisation of literary trends in the past as well as using powerful poetic modes of expression.
This is a novel that works on many levels and is both art and entertainment. Cerebral without being dry, full of spectacle but never simple and thrilling whilst being reflective. Definitely more than reading before seeing the film.
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