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What I liked:
- characters: all strong presences
- themes: friendship, fathers and sons, the portrayal of a City - Flats vs point, Mystic River vs the meaning of the title, Fate and how an event changes lives, what if, the portrayal of judgmentality



"He didn’t know why people were mean to other people. He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand".

It's a solid story. Dennis Lehane manages to create very humane characters that are sympathetic and complex. The novel looks at how an event affects the lives of three characters whose paths first cross when they're children. Dave, Sean, Jimmy spend time together but they all come from very distinct backgrounds and look like they are set to follow completely different paths in life.

And then the thing happens. The thing that leads them to think, even many years later, if things could have been different. Fate puts them all together again, on a major collision course as the daughter of one of them is murdered.

As the investigation is underway, old events are revisited, old questions asked. They all have strong stories going for them, all have strong presences (the movie adaptation makes them even more magnetic with the phenomenal cast choices; i feel like the movie is a good companion to the novel).

I don't care much for the vernacular but it is part of the environment building that gives it a part of its immersion. All three characters are important. Dave ..Dave is particularly interesting and tragic, problematic but sympathetic, strong and weak at the same time. Jimmy and Sean are both strong leader types, and they are opposites in pretty much most things. Friends and rivals with mutual acknowledgement. I really appreciate how this narrative starts from childhood and goes on to show how they turned out to be and what they struggle with and the eternal what if questions...some used as justification.

"glimpses, really of a life that could have been mine if that car hadn't rolled down Gamon street".
The problem is, also bad timing and secrets. "Secrets are poison, secrets are walls". taking action instead of thinking through things a little more leads to more regrets.

The question of how something comes back to haunt and affect you. The question of how responses to a tragic event in those around you affect you as well - even years later. The relationship between the three characters has a compelling dynamic that veers between friendship/sympathy and rivrly / contempt. There's loyalty and faith and test of it. And things are messed up, but characters make the most of what they have.

Very good novel with strong characters.

It's got a different appeal than Shutter Island, which I also really loved- the twist there and likeable characters are ones I keep thinking back on. But this story here is more affecting in its examination of various relationships and how, by a stroke of fate, they get on a collision course, their lives intertwine and what emerges from this as well as from the confrontation and reckoning with the past.