The Sheila Variations

The Books: "Mystic River" (Dennis Lehane)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

There are many good books - there are many (although fewer) GREAT books - and there are only a handful of what I call "perfect" books. I can think of many GREAT books that are not "perfect". Doesn't take away from their greatness - as a matter of fact their blatant imperfections are part of their greatness, as far as I'm concerned. But a perfect book is rare, indeed. Mystic River is, in my estimation, a PERFECT book. It's not just the plot, and the way it flows, and moves on inevitably to its horrible conclusion - it's not just the characters, who are uniformly well-drawn, these people are alive - it's not the larger themes of redemption, suffering, and ambition - although those are rock-solid ... it's also the WRITING itself. My God, is Lehane good. He's a hugely popular writer - my dad loves him - I haven't read his other books, but on the strength of Mystic River, I'd read all of Lehane's books. Again, because the plot itself is really what people talk about when they talk about Mystic River - the all-around GOODNESS of his prose might go unnoticed. Here is the first paragraph of the book. This is what I mean by "perfect":

When Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus were kids, their fathers worked together at the Coleman Candy plant and carried the stench of warm chocolate back home with them. It became a permanent character of their clothes, the beds they slept in, the vinyl backs of their car seats. Sean's kitchen smelled like a Fudgsicle, his bathroom like a Coleman Chew-Chew bar. By the time they were eleven, Sean and Jimmy had developed a hatred of sweets so total that they took their coffee black for the rest of their lives and never ate dessert.

Now that is MY kind of writing. There's not one over-written bit. It's deceptively simple, and I LOVE deceptively simple writing: the men they will become already haunts the two young boys - it's in the writing. It's also noticeable that Dave Boyle is NOT included in the first paragraph, which I am sure is deliberate. And perfect. It has such detail - sensory detail ... I just think Lehane is a commanding writer, and a paragraph like that commands your attention. It is not a description - it feels like it's a whole WORLD being shown to you.

The whole book is full of writing like that.

And it is also is one of a handful of books that made me dissolve in tears at the very last paragraph. What a last paragraph. Terrible. Awful. But not bleak. The hope that peace will come in the next life. Horrible.

Great book.

I'm not going to post any of the more obvious excerpts (although the bit about the boys looking in the back of the car, and noticing it's dirty - is magnificent) - but post an excerpt having to do with Annabeth, the wife of Jimmy, the ex-con. What a character. Too bad Laura Linney played her in the film. That wasn't right at ALL. You know who would have been spectacular? And I'm not just saying that cause she's my cousin. But Kerry O'Malley would be so so awesome as Annabeth. She would have knocked that part out of the park.

A woman who is not silly or warm in any way - and yet not uptight or prissy. She's all about family and tribe - but she's not innately hostile to outsiders. She also is the kind of women that men LOVE. She's probably a tiger in the sack. But she also inspires fear in men. Maybe they want to dissemble when they're around her, hide a bit ... have her be more WARM. Nope. Annabeth don't play that game. She respects strength. But she's not ever a ball-breaker. She makes men want to be honest. She thinks dishonesty and smallness is unforgivable. Or no - not unforgivable. It's just that she would openly grow bored with someone who was consistently small and petty, she wouldn't give them the time of day. NEXT. You gonna throw polite bullshit at me when I ask you a direct open question? You bore me. When Annabeth asks, "How are you?" she expects a real answer, not a bullshit "I'm fine." People could find that off-putting, scary. Watch how she deals with Sean in this next scene!! Watch how she talks to him, and how she SEES. Not everybody can look at a near-stranger and see what is REALLY going on with them. And then, of course, there's her terrifying Lady Macbeth moment at the end of the book (which completely did not work in the film - felt like it came out of nowhere - but in the book it all makes sense. A terrible kind of sense.)

Listen to this dialogue here. It's so damn good.

Sean, the cop, sits on the porch with Annabeth - wife of Jimmy, his childhood friend. He has moved away from the old' hood - so he doesn't really know Annabeth that well. He sits there, and this is his first real un-official encounter with her. She is formidable - but in a very specific Boston-type way - hard to explain. But she is a Boston woman, through and through. Yup. Lehane gets it so right.

If you haven't read Mystic River, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

EXCERPT FROM Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

Sean sat on the back porch with Annabeth Marcus as she took tiny sips from a glass of white wine and smoked her cigarettes no more than halfway before she'd extinguish them, her face lit by the exposed bulb above them. It was a strong face, never pretty probably, but always striking. She was not unused to being stared at, Sean guessed, and yet she was probably oblivious as to way she was worth the trouble. She reminded Sean a bit of Jimmy's mother but without the air of resignation and defeat, and she reminded Sean of his own mother in her complete and effortless self-possession, reminded him of Jimmy, actually, in that way, as well. He could see Annabeth Marcus as being a fun woman, but never a frivolous one.

"So," she said to Sean as he lit a cigarette for her, "what are you doing with your evening after you're released from comforting me."

"I'm not-"

She waved it away. "I appreicate it. So what're you doing?"

"Going to see my mother."

"Really?"

He nodded. "It's her birthday. Go celebrate it with her and the old man."

"Uh-huh," she said. "And how long have you been divorced?"

"It shows?"

"You wear it like a suit."

"Ah. Separated, actually, for a bit over a year."

"She live here?"

"Not anymore. She travels."

"You said that with acid. 'Travels'."

"Did I?" He shrugged.

She held up a hand. "I hate to keep doing this to you - getting my mind off Katie at your expense. So you don't have to answer any of my questions. I'm just nosy, and you're an interesting guy."

He smiled. "No, I'm not. I'm actually very boring, Mrs. Marcus. You take away my job, and I disappear."

"Annabeth," she said. "Call me that, would you?"

"Sure."

"I find it hard to believe, Trooper Devine, that you're boring. You know what's odd, though?"

"What's that?"

She turned in her chair and looked at him. "You don't strike me as the kind of guy who'd give someone phantom tickets."

"Why's that?"

"It seems childish," she said. "You don't seem like a childish man."

Sean shrugged. In his experience, everyone was childish at one time or another. It's what you reverted to, particularly when the shit piled up.

In more than a year, he'd never spoken to anyone about Lauren - not his parents, his few stray friends, not even the police psychologist the commander had made a brief and pointed mention of once Lauren's moving out had become common knowledge around the barracks. But here was Annabeth, a stranger who'd suffered a loss, and he could feel her probing for his loss, needing to see it or share it or something along those lines, needing to know, Sean figured, that she wasn't being singled out.

"My wife's a stage manager," he said quietly. "For road shows, you know? Lord of the Dance toured the country last year - my wife stage-managed. That sort of thing. She's doing one now - Annie Get Your Gun, maybe. I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. Whatever they're recycling this year. We were a weird couple. I mean, our jobs, right, how further apart can you get?"

"But you loved her," Annabeth said.

He nodded. "Yeah. Still do." He took a breath, leaning back in his chair and sucking it down. "So the guy I gave the tickets to, he was ..." Sean's mouth went dry and he shook his head, had the sudden urge to just get the hell off this porch and out of this house.

"He was a rival?" Annabeth said, her voice delicate.

Sean took a cigarette from the pack and lit one, nodding. "That's a nice word for it. Yeah, we'll say that. A rival. And my wife and I, we were going through some shit for a while. Neither of us was around much, and so on. And this, uh, rival - he moved in on her."

"And you reacted badly," Annabeth said. A statement, not a question.

Sean rolled his eyes in her direction. "You know anyone who reacts well?"

Annabeth gave him a hard look, one that seemed to suggest that sarcasm was below him, or maybe just something she wasn't a fan of in general.

"You still love her, though."

"Sure. Hell, I think she still loves me." He stubbed out his cigarette. "She calls me all the time. Calls me and doesn't talk."

"Wait, she --"

"I know," he said.

"-- calls you up and doesn't say a word?"

"Yup. Been going on for about eight months now."

Annabeth laughed. "No offense, but that's the weirdest thing I've heard in a while."

"No argument." He watched a fly dart in and away from the bare lightbulb. "One of these days, I figure, she's gotta talk. That's what I'm holding out for."

He heard his half-assed chuckle die in the night and the echo of it embarrassed him. So they sat in silence for a bit, smoking, listening to the buzz of the fly as it made its crazy darts toward the light.

"What's her name?" Annabeth asked. "This whole time, you've never once said her name."

"Lauren," he said. "Her name's Lauren."

Her name hungi n the air for a bit like the loose strand of a cobweb.

"And you loved her since you were kids?"

"Freshman year of college," he said. "Yeah, I guess we were kids."

He could remember a November rainstorm, the two of them kissing for the first time in a doorway, the feel of goose bumps on her flesh, both of them shaking.

"Maybe that's the problem," Annabeth said.

Sean looked at her. "That we're not kids anymore?"

"One of you, at least," she said.

Sean didn't ask which one.

"Jimmy told me you said Katie was planning to elope with Brendan Harris."

Sean nodded.

"Well, that's just it, isn't it?"

He turned in his chair. "What?"

She blew a stream of smoke up at the empty clotheslines. "These silly dreams you have when you're young. I mean, what, Katie and Brendan Harris were going to make a life in Las Vegas? How long would that little Eden have lasted? Maybe they'd be on their second trailer park, second kid, but it would hit them sooner or later - life isn't happily ever after and golden sunsets and shit like that. It's work. The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that and maybe no one deserves the burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken and have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But, shit, you roll up your sleeves and work - at everything - because that's what growing older is."

"Annabeth," Sean said, "anyone ever tell you that you're a hard woman?"

She turned her head to him, her eyes closed, a dreamy smile on her face. "All the time."

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