A lot to do today. But.

I finished Shutter Island. It absolutely fucked with my head, right down to the last chapter. I had crazier dreams than usual last night as a result, some involving his characters. This book has given me a literary hangover. It was brilliant in every way.

Except.

I felt compelled to then go back and re-read the utterly amazing Prologue. When I did, therein I found Lehane’s cheat: the person narrating the Prologue said some things in a way that, given the rest of the book, he would have never said — at least, not in that way. It sets you up falsely so that you will not suspect anything in the book to come. If it were written honestly (and I can’t think of any reason this character would not be particularly reliable, despite his advanced age), one would suspect something was amiss nearly from the beginning. But then, he didn’t really need the false setup at all. The character speaking in the Prologue could have skipped it all and it would have not lost a hair of brilliance.

So, why he did that kind of confuses me and pisses me off a bit. But the rest of the book is extraordinary. Just…nnNNNGgggrah!

On another note, I read a great commentary this morning on the James Cameron “documentary” by Bruce Feiler. (His blog is acting up. I hope he fixes it soon.)

And now back to work.