Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island has something of a dramatic plot twist about two thirds of the way through, if you don't already know. I would be lying if I claimed to not have enjoyed this book. I liked the thrill of that moment when the gimmickery didn't feel like gimmickery, when I was genuinely surprised. That's rare for me, not that I'm smart or anything, just cynical about literary devices and tricky writer shit.

The story itself is about a pair of federal marshals arriving at an institution for the criminally insane to investigate the disappearance of an inmate, Rachel Solando, who is there for having drowned her children. This prison/mental hospital is on an island. It follows a line of interesting, if not particularly alarming, twists till about 3/4 of the way in we hit up against the stonewall of the big surprise. I won't spoil it for you. There are links to to the book here. Don't be a hater.

I have two points to make about this book:

1. It strikes me that pretty much anybody (especially if they have a quirky personality) could be committed by their family should the family so desire. Think of any of the people you know over age 25 and let us say that you heard that they had been sent to a mental hospital. Would it be that hard for you to come up with a reason? Something that you could think back to and say, ah, yes, I should have seen it coming? Look at those ugly pictures he has on his blog! What normal person would enjoy such things! I knew he was fucking nuts!

2. The surprise is not the kind where the writer has been thinking of this all along.If you've ever written a short story or a novel and tried to be cute with your endings, you know that surprise endings are fucking hard to pull off. The way it happens most easily, is for the ending to surprise you. You're writing along happily and then it hits you: what if I did this? Or this? I suspect that that is what happened here. You can see the narrative building the suspense in one direction, and then you can see where the lightbulb goes on.