Saturday, January 07, 2017

Review: Live by Night

Live by Night Live by Night by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had this book on my shelf for a bit but when I saw it was being made into a movie, I decided it was time to read it. It's a great book; Lehane at the top of his game. It should make a great movie.

It's precursor The Given Day was really good, but was a bit unwieldy. There were too many story lines going at once. Live by Night is much more focused on just Joe Coughlin's life. This allowed the reader to get much more inside of Joe's life than Danny's and the other characters from The Given Day. We get a much more introspective novel.

It didn't strike me until reading this how existential Lehane's novels are. All of his novels seem to be about characters thrown into a violent and absurd world, facing hard choices, trying to make the best of their lives. Nevertheless, Lehane's characters are far more constrained by their past and their environments than a Sartrean Existentialist would have them (radical freedom and all). This is evident with Coughlin as well--and in part is one of themes of the book: one's past will catch up to you and reaps its 'rewards.'

The one thing I am still not sure about is the ending. I won't spoil it, but it didn't sit quite right with me. That said, I am not sure any other ending would have been better.

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