Book Club | January – Shutter Island

Month #5: Riley's the Pagemaster

This month, we read Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane.

This quickly slid into my top book spot of the club thus far, even if I wasn't the one to choose it.

Val sat out this round, so Riley and I read the book in about 2.5 sittings. We were really into the page-turner.

I would definitely pick the book up again in a couple years and re-experience it. Such a good story.

We watched the movie yesterday after going through Riley's discussion questions.

****Reminder: don’t read past this part if you can’t risk potential spoilers! I don’t want to be responsible for ruining any punches for you.****

Here are the discussion questions from our meeting:

1. Did you like the book?

2. At what point did you start questioning Teddy’s sanity? When he arrived in the doctors room?

3. Did you ever see the pieces coming together?

4. What did you perceive to be the role of water in this novel? Child in fishing boat, raining, storming, drowning, etc.

5. Did you think Teddy was ever going to escape the island?

6. What was your perception of the book’s closing scene of Teddy talking with Chuck?

7. How did you feel about the ending? Satisfied? Disappointed?

8. Did you ever question Chuck’s loyalty to Teddy?

9. Did you have a favourite and least favourite character?

10. What did you think the purpose of the prologue was?

11. Were you frustrated with Teddy when he was not accepting the truth being explained to him?

*****

The movie was almost spot-on word-for-word following the book.

It had a bit of a different take on the ending, which I actually liked better than the book (without giving anything away).

I would definitely recommend reading/watching to anyone who hasn't already.

Next up: Val is the Pagemaster and we've started reading... THE SCARLET LETTER! A classic I haven't read yet!

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