Shutter Island
First edition
|
|
| Author | Dennis Lehane |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Chip Kidd (designer) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English language |
| Genre | Gothic, Psychological Horror, Crime |
| Publisher | William Morrow |
|
Publication date
|
April 15, 2003 |
| Media type | Print (Mass) |
| Pages | 380 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 51969184 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3562.E426 S55 2003 |
Shutter Island is a best-selling novel by Dennis Lehane, published by Harper Collins in April 2003. A film adaptation was released in February 2010. Lehane has said he sought to write a novel that would be a homage to Gothic settings, B movies, and pulp. He described the novel as a hybrid of the works of the Brontë sisters and the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. His intent was to write the main characters in a position where they would lack 20th century resources such as radio communications. He also structured the book to be more taut than his previous book, Mystic River.
Lehane was inspired by the hospital and grounds on Long Island in Boston Harbor for the model of the hospital and island. Lehane had visited it in the Blizzard of 1978 as a child with his uncle and family.
In 1954, widower U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule go on a ferry boat to Shutter Island, the home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando (who was incarcerated for drowning her three children). She has escaped the hospital and apparently the desolate island, despite being kept in a locked cell under constant supervision.
In Rachel's room, Teddy and Chuck discover a code that Teddy breaks. He tells Chuck that he believes the code points to a 67th patient, when records show only 66. Teddy also reveals that he wants to avenge the death of his wife Dolores, who was murdered two years prior by a man called Andrew Laeddis, who he believes is an inmate in Ashecliffe Hospital. The novel is interspersed with graphic descriptions of World War II and Dachau which Teddy helped to liberate. After Hurricane Carol hits the island, Teddy and Chuck investigate Ward C, where Teddy believes government experiments with psychotropic drugs are being conducted. While separated from Chuck for a short while in Ward C, Teddy meets a patient called George Noyce, who tells him that everything is an elaborate game designed for him, and that Chuck is not to be trusted.
...
Wikipedia