I listened to this on audiobook more or less at random because it was available instantly from my library. I saw the movie when it was out in theaters and have not revisited it since. If you’ve seen the film, which is directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, you know that it has a rather shocking twist ending which would be impossible to forget. Ergo, I went into the book knowing the ending. But I thought there would be enough thrills along the way to compensate. I was wrong.
For the unfamiliar, Shutter Island concerns a U.S. Marshal named Teddy Daniels, who is sent to a remote island with a new partner, Chuck Aule, to investigate the disappearance of an inmate from a mental asylum. The inmate in question is a woman named Rachel who drowned her three children but who seems to have no memory of the incident at all.
Daniels has an ulterior motive alongside his official duty. He is still reeling from the death of his wife, Dolores, who perished in a fire that was set by another inmate at the asylum. As Daniels conducts his simultaneous investigations, he becomes more and more suspicious of the conduct of the doctors and administrators running the facility.
And… that’s really all I can say without getting into spoiler territory, which, given how much knowing the ending ruined this reading experience for me, I am loath to do. I will just say that knowing the ending, especially this ending, turned this into a largely thrill-less thriller.
