karenika - books - mystic river

Mystic River

"You ever think," Jimmy said, "how the most minor decision can change the entire direction of your life?"

Sean held his eyes, "How so?"

Jimmy's face was pale and blank, the eyes turned up as if he were trying to remember where he'd left his car keys.

"I head once that Hitler's mother almost aborted him but bailed at the last minute. I heard he left Vienna because he couldn't sell his paintings. He sells a painting, though, Sean? Or his mother actually aborts? The world's a way different place. You know? Or. like, say you miss your bus one morning, so you buy that second cup of coffee, buy a scratch ticket while you're at it. The scratch ticket hits. Suddenly you don't have to take the bus anymore. You drive to work in a Lincoln. But you get in a car crash and die. All because you missed your bus one day."

Sean looked at Whitey. Whitey shrugged.

"No," Jimmy said, "don't do that. Don't look at him like I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not in shock."

"Okay, Jim."

"I'm just saying there are threads, okay? Threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets affected. Say it rained in Dallas and so Kennedy didn't ride in a convertible. Stalin stayed in the seminary. Say you and me, Sean, say we got in that car with Dave Boyle."

"What?" Whitey said. "What car?"

Sean held up a hand to him and said to Jimmy, "I'm losing you here."

"You are? If we got in that car, life would have been a very different thing. My first wife, Marita, Katie's mother? She was so beautiful. She was regal. You know the way some Latin women can be? Gorgeous. And she knew it. If a guy wanted to approach her, he better have some big fucking balls on him. And I did. I was King Shit at sixteen. I was fearless. And I did approach her, and I did ask her out. And a year later - Christ, I was seventeen, a fucking child - we got married and she was carrying Katie."

Jimmy walked around his daughter's body in slow, steady circles.

"Here's the thing, Sean - if we'd gotten in that car, been driven off to God knows where and and had God knows what done to us by two ass-fucking freaks for four days when we were, what, eleven? - I don't think I'd have been so ballsy at sixteen. I think I would have been a basket case, you know, stoked on Ritalin or whatever. I know I never would have had what it took to ask out a woman as haughty-gorgeous as Marita. And so we never would have had Katie. And Katie, then, never would have been murdered. But she was. All because we didn't get in that car, Sean. You see what I'm saying?"

Mystic River was one of the best reads I've had in a long time. There were bits and pieces I didn't like, of course, but it was the first time I've read a mystery that was so character based. The characters were each very strong and the novel was well written and expressed grief so well. The only part I didn't like was the ending. Once the killer was revealed, the story frizzled.