The Lace Reader

“The Lace Reader” is a challenging book. It is not written to be easy to read. From the very beginning we are told that it is full of lies and deceptions. By the end it is clear that this is not at all the book that it may have appeared to be.

If you pick this up looking for a murder mystery, set in modern day Salem, investigated by a woman gifted with the second sight, then you may end up feeling that you’re in the right cinema but have ended up watching the wrong movie.

“The Lace Reader” sets out to do something entirely different and something that I found much more original and satisfying. It makes the process of seeing the patterns of our own lives, the significance and consequences of our choices, the impact of the hurts show more we suffer and inflict along the way, problematic. It leads us to understand that truth comes from asking the right question and being open to unpalatable answers. In this view of the world, the truth about our lives is an emergent, malleable, elusive thing that we see with the corners of our eyes but which we must find a way to see if we before we can truly be ourselves.

One of the refreshing things about “The Lace Reader” is that Brunonia Barry manages to do justice to this complex theme and still produce an exciting, accessible novel that carries real emotional weight.
She does this by writing a novel that uses four literary devices that together act as a continuous invitation to the reader to work things out for themselves.

The first device is the unreliable narrator. Most of the novel is written in the first person present tense from the point of view of Towner, a troubled woman, returning to her childhood home and being forced by events to confront all the things she has been trying to forget. The opening lines of the book tell us how we should hear what the main character tells us:

“My name is Towner Whitney. No that’s not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.
I am a crazy woman… That last part is true.”

Brunonia Barry writes Towner Whitney in such a way that we can care about her, and hope for her without necessarily believing her, which gives the reader much the same relationship to Towner as most of the people in her life who love her.

For me part of the joy of the novel was trying to understand how much of what I was reading was true.

The second literary device, “The Lace Reader’s Guide” is there to help the reader with this task. Lace Reading is a skill akin to reading the Tarot. The lace is used as a focal point in which the Lace Reader discovers the true answer to the Seekers question. This answer sits in “the space between what is real and what is only imagined.” The secrets of Lace Reading are set out in The Lace Reader’s Guide, extracts from which are sprinkled through the book. Their distribution is not random. They are the reader’s way markers and each contains something that we need to bear in mind when reading the next section of the text.

Just when you think you understand the narrative thrust of the book, Brunonia Barry introduces her third literary device, a piece of “fiction” written by Towner as an act of therapy intended to enable her to recover lost memories and restore an integrated sense of self. In this section, Towner’s voice is younger and more intense. The action is compelling. The text could be a free-standing story. The fact that it is just another set of strands in the lace of the story only makes it stronger.

The final device Barry uses is a skillful weaving of past and present in the narration. This is often used in thrillers to feed backstory or to heighten pace but Barry uses it for something more. She helps us to understand that past and present are self-made fictions that over-write one another. Towner’s unreliable memory means that her present is often being rewritten by what she discovers about her own past.

I’ve focused here on the mechanics of the story and the ideas behind it. That doesn’t do just to Barry’s strong evocation of place and people. The island home she describes, with its caves and wild dogs and endless games of hide and seek of all kinds has a permanent home in my imagination.

I reached the end of the novel wanting to read it again, this time with the conscious understanding that the title is meant to describe not just the main characters in the book but the role in which Barry has cast me as the reader. show less

It isn't often upon finishing a book that I want to turn back to the beginning and immediately read it again. If I hadn't finished this book at 4:00 AM, I probably would have done exactly that.

Years ago, after the death of her twin, Towner Whitney fled Salem, Massachusetts, for Southern California ("which was as far as I could go without falling off the end of the earth," as she puts it). When her aunt Eva disappears, her brother asks that she come home. Upon her return to Salem, Towner sets up residence in her missing aunt's house rather than stay with her agoraphobic mother May on the offshore island where she was raised.

As Towner reacquaints herself with the environs and residents of her childhood home, she sees ghosts and memories show more everywhere; some are comfortable and sweet, but most are disturbing at best. She flinches from these memories while at the same time doing her best to confront them, which includes facing not only her jilted high school sweetheart but her former Uncle Cal, now the leader of the "Calvinists," a radically fundamentalist Christian sect determined to save the soul of the witches of Salem, which in his opinion includes the Whitney women: May, with her island sanctuary for battered and abused women and their children; the missing Great Aunt Eva, who read fortunes in the intricacies of a lace panel; and Towner herself, gifted with the ability to hear thoughts in the minds of those around her. At the same time, Towner becomes involved with Rafferty, the detective investigating Eva's disappearance as he struggles with his own demons.

Brunonia Barry has written a complex and complicated story, weaving bits of memory with pieces of the present as she switches us from Towner's memories, to her point of view, to Detective Rafferty's perspective, and back again, with occasional side jaunts to see through someone else's eyes. No one, it seems, has the whole story, and some of what is known may not even be truth.

The Lace Reader is a lovely novel, rich with subtext, full of hints, revealing nothing until the final pages. If I have a single quibble, it's that too little of Detective Rafferty's backstory is revealed. Although we can speculate on his reasons for joining the ranks of Salem's law enforcement, we have nothing truly concrete. But then again, I read the majority of this novel through a night of insomnia and may have missed a few things along the way.

Regardless, The Lace Reader is beautifully written. It's certainly one of the best books I've read in recent years. show less

"My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time."

Thus Brunonia Barry warns her reader that the likeable narrator of 'The Lace Reader' is not to be trusted. Nothing will be as it seems at first -or will it?

This is a magical, compelling novel. The basic plot is simple enough: a young woman returns to her hometown after the disappearance and probable death of the family matriarch. We see much of the story through her eyes, yet she has from the onset warned us that she is an unreliable narrator. Even as the judicious reader questions much of what she reads, interest in the eccentric Whitney family and their histories becomes compelling.

Giving away details of the show more story line would be unfair to both reader and author. So to do a quick `junior high book report' approach - the characters are life-like and well-drawn; the plot is well-developed but twisting (careful reading is demanded of the reader); the author's style flows smoothly, and the ending is a roller coaster ride.

The paradox of a really good book for me is that I want to race through it - the `I can't put it down' feeling. I have to know what's happening next. While at the same time I am saddened at the thought of finishing the novel and leaving the magic world of the book. This was true of The Lace Reader. It's difficult to put down and the return to the real world comes with a thud! show less

All I can say is wow. This book tells the story of Towner Whitney of recent-past Salem, Massachusetts. A modern day witch-hunt against a woman with a dark secret and mental illness that makes it hard to discern fact from fiction are the draw here. The self-declared unreliable narrator lives up to that title, making the entire book all that more interesting to ponder over in the end.

The hardest parts of this book were: the beginning, which was difficult to understand because you don't get what's going on at first, and everything in Part 2 and on, which is when I was so hooked I couldn't put it down. When you get to the end, you take a deep breath look around and try to put everything you just read together.

While at times the novel does show more get ambiguous, I rather liked this technique because it brings to mind the hazy memories a mental illness can create. In other words, it makes sense in the context of the book, however, it's not for all readers and you should pick this book up warned in advance. I tend to like books where you have to work at the end to figure out what's happened. If you don't, you probably want to stay away from this (although, in all honesty, I thought the ending was rather straightforward and explained what had happened quite clearly...).

All together a fabulous story which is hard to define (mystery/suspense and drama with a dash of understated romance and great characters is my best guess). Highly recommended to anyone with a penchant for mystery novels or a flair for the dramatic ;) show less

The story takes place in Salem, Massachusetts and centers around Towner Whitney, who has returned home due of her Great Aunt Eva's unexplained disappearance. Eva is the town's original Lace Reader. She makes lace and then reads the lace as a way of predicting the future. In addition to Eva, we have May, Towner's mother who lives on Yellow Dog Island. May lives with a group of women who have come to her in need and uses the island as a way to protect them. This includes Towner's Aunt Emma, who has been blinded by her husband and left with brain damage.There is also Ann, who is part of a different "circle" of women who practice love spells but her and her group are often mistaken for witches by the tourists in the area.

Towner has issues show more of her own. She lives in the city, but has been battling her own demons in between bouts of mental illness and shock treatments. Her return home, and her "visions" concern the people around her because they know her history and what she has been through. She experiences gaps in memory, partly because of the treatment she has endured. She is also grieving over the suicide of her twin sister, Lindley which she has never quite recovered from.

This story is rich with detail, but none of it seemed unnecessary or gratuitous. Sometimes when writing about characters that are part of the same family, there is a blurring of lines as to where one begins and another ends. I did not get that with this story. I felt that although many were indeed relatives, each character had its own identity and complexity. I wanted to know more about each of them and more importantly, I cared about what happened to them. As Towner tries to piece together what has happened to Eva, she comes to terms with much of what has plagued her and we see "hope".

The Lace Reader is a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. It's a mystery with a tad of historical fiction thrown in. I was completely absorbed by the story and although there is an expectation to suspend disbelief in a couple of places, I gladly did so without hesitation. I think this book would be a fantastic pick for book groups. show less

My opinion of this varied the deeper I got in. I had a hard time keeping straight the relationship of the adults Eva, Emma, & May tho I can see that was deliberate on the author's part as Towner also had them confused. At one point I felt I couldn't imagine any people so messed up as to create & accept the Calvinist cult, and that made me feel like lace reading was also an aspect without basis in reality, and the dysfunction of Emma & May. Like some of Alice Hoffman's books, Barry seemed to be stretching what readers will accept just to create a saleable tale. This was well written, though, and the ending was not what I expected but very redemptive.
The main male characters were pretty dysfunctional also. Although we never learn much show more about Rafferty's past, he at least is doing his best to help others.
I liked the setting on the ocean/bay, the mix of tourist boats and lobster boats, and that Towner was proficient with boats--perhaps as a midwesterner I am enamoured of the sea. show less

The Lace Reader quickly became one of my favorite books. That characters are all engaging and I really enjoyed how Salem became a character as well. I loved how the history of the Salem witch trials was peppered in among the modern story of ostracism. My favorite part of this novel was the psychological aspect and the somewhat magical yet practical female characters. The twist at the end was something I never saw coming and it made me want to reread The Lace Reader many times. This is an excellent novel!
~ED