I planned to have more than one book for a summer reading. So far, I have only finished one, in a staggered reading during my morning commute to work and quiet times that I could steal away from chores or errands.
I just finished Dennis Lehane's, "Mystic River."
I was compelled to read it after seeing the movie version (Director: Clint Eastwood) on cable TV a while ago. I wasn't able to watch it from the beginning but I saw enough that left a gripping effect on me to get the details from the experience of reading the full narrative of the story.
The book was an intense emotional and psychological ride. It challenges notions of loyalty, family, friendship, love, pain, justice, punishment, morality and redemption. The words were raw, sharp, lyrical and haunting. In the end, there may have existed a fragile sense of closure and hope, if not for its wishful thinking by the characters as well as the reader.
A friend commented that I should just watch the movie (like this and that of others) so I didn't have to read the book from which it was adapted. I suppose it's a matter of preference and convenience. I told him that although that may be true, I said that "reading gives a different texture" compared to on-screen viewing. And that texture for me includes getting into the internal and external worlds of the character, the journey into the settings and locations as if I was part of them, access to flip pages back and forth in an attempt to tie things together and to be touched by words that I can filter through my own meaning.
Sometimes, I am compelled to see a movie adapatation after reading a book or vice versa. Either way, or solely doing one or the other, creates a self-indulgent escapism not unlike waters of a mystic river.
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