Mystic+River+Book+Proposal

The eerie tale, Mystic River, is about three best friends who have a very unfortunate fate. This mystery was written by the powerful writer Dennis Lehane. Our group members are ready for a book that is going to leave us on the edge of our seats that is overwhelmingly complex, but delicately filled with emotion. The author being such an inspiring writer is one of the main reasons this book appealed to us. Lehane is the writer of five New York TImes bestsellers and several of them have been made into award winning films, including Mystic River. You may think that we chose to read this book because there is a movie based off of it, but we assure you we will not use the movie to excuse ourselves from reading the book. Critics rave about Lehane's ability to portray 3-D characters and create such depth in his novels. "Lehane has let loose with a stand-alone novel of depth and fervent passion. His ability to create crystal-clear portraits of humanity and then place them in the darker side of life is a writer's true gift" (Memmott).

Mystic River is a complete change in genre for our group members. As teenaged girls, we are drawn to romantic novels about girls like ourselves. However, this book is a mystery thriller about a murder and has very dark aspects to it. There is sexual assault and a brutal murder in the book so you may think this book is too inappropriate for our age, however, our group members have a high enough maturity level to handle this book. This book will help us become more mature and educated on the importance crime plays in this world. We will learn from mistakes certain characters have made, and challenge ourselves to find out who the murderer is before the book tells us. Mystic River is a more mature book and will challenge our ability to look deeper into the story and read between the lines. Lehane's novel will take much more than just reading the words off every page, it will take reading comprehension and the ability to understand hidden clues.

Lehane's novel will create discussion between our group members that will give us an opportunity to read and think out of our comfort zone. There will be several options on who committed the murder and why. This will allow us to use logic, reason and read deeply for some hidden clues to figure out who the culprit is. This discussion will be more advanced than just talking about who likes what characters, it will be about who we think is involved in the murder and more. The novel will force us to think outside the box and share our theories. "Mystic River contains a who-done-it, but that is a subplot of the theme that centers on the impact on adults of their broken childhood relationships" (Klausner). Mystic River is definitely worthy of reading due to its talented author, complex mystery, and advanced plot.