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Jul
17
Book Review: The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
2008 at 11am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Available for purchase July 29th.
When I saw this book on our ARC pile at work, I almost didn’t pick it up. The title and cover didn’t really appeal to me. It didn’t seem like something I would normally read…then, I started hearing wonderful things about it on LT and decided to give it a try. And thank goodness for that.
The Lace Reader takes place in 1996 and opens with Towner Whitney, who narrates most of the book, leaving California, where she has lived for the last 15 years, to return to her hometown of Salem, Massachusetts because her great-aunt Eva, who raised her, is missing. Towner establishes herself as an unreliable narrator from the first lines of the book, in which she says, “Never believe me. I lie all the time. I am a crazy woman…That last part is true,” which serves to make an already interesting book even more enthralling.
As Towner joins the investigation into Eva’s disapperance, she reveals pieces of a personal and family history that are filled with abuse, heartbreak, and many, many skeletons in the proverbial closet. We learn early on that Towner had a twin sister, Lyndley, whom her mother gave away to Towner’s Aunt Emma when they were born, and who died tragically at the age of 17 after enduring years of abuse and the hands of her alcholic father, Towner’s uncle Cal Boynton, who is also the leader of the local cult. The death of her twin sister pushed Towner over the edge, and she was eventually hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, where the electric shock therapy she received caused her to lose many of her memories from her life BTH (before the hospital).
As Towner reconstructs her memories, she explains that all of the Whitney women have the ability to read lace–to look beyond and through the patterns and see a person’s future–and that the last time she tried, 15 years ago, Lyndley “saw the same thing I saw in the pattern, and what we saw that night led her to the choices that eventually killed her.” As indicated by the book’s title, lace reading plays a major role in the lives of the characters and in the plot of the book, as Eva’s ability to read lace earned her the label of “witch” by the Calvinists (the members of Cal’s cult) and led to a longstanding dispute between them and Eva’s group of women friends and fellow lace makers, the Circle. The circumstances surrounding Lyndley’s death are a mystery through most of the book, and when Towner reveals the truth, it is shocking.
As she further explains lace reading, Towner states that
Sometimes, when you look back, you can point to a time when your world shifts and heads in another direction. In lace reading this is called the “still point.” Eva says it’s the point around which everything pivots and real patterns start to emerge.
There seem to be several “still points” in Towner’s life, and as her story unfolds, it becomes increasingly enthralling and unputdownable. The ending–actually, the last 100 pages–is unexpected, emotionally jarring, and utterly unforgettable. It nearly brought me to tears, and that is a rare feat.
Brunonia Barry knows how to tell a good story. Her use of changing points of view gives the characters added depth and provides extra details that make the story richer and more compelling. Her decision to present readers with Towner’s hospital journal of partially fictionalized writings about the events that led up to Lyndley’s death is particularly shrewd given that we never know how much to believe, and the momentum she builds in the final pages is simply incredible.
This is an amazing story that ultimately illustrates the abilities our minds and hearts have to protect us from our own demons, and it will easily earn a place in my top five reads of the year. The Lace Reader left me breathless. Mark your calendars for July 29th and don’t miss this fantastic read.
Click here to go to the official website for The Lace Reader and here for the author’s blog.
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I’ll have to check this one out. Thanks for the review from us at http://www.bentpage.wordpress.com. By the sound of your review, you may like An Island Away; worth a look.
nice review! Such a wonderful book…
I can’t wait to read this book. I’m bermudaonion on LT – I’ll look for you on there.
This is definitely something I’m going to have to pick up and read. Every review I’ve read has been glowing. Thanks so much for the review!!!
[...] been a pretty good reading week here in Readerville. I finished and reviewed The Glass Castle and The Lace Reader, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed (click on title for my review) , and I’m about two-thirds [...]
I wasn’t familiar with this title, but it’s going on my TBR list. Thanks for putting this one on my radar!
[...] you’re looking for good books to read, The Lace Reader and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society are both coming out a week from today on [...]
[...] great pleasure of reading The Lace Reader, Brunonia Barry’s breathtaking debut novel (click here to read my review). It begins: “My name is Towner Whitney. No, that’s not exactly true. [...]
[...] and I’m not; if you haven’t already seen a billion reviews of this book, click here and here. What I will say about the book is that I just finished reading it, and I feel like I need to be [...]
Top five? That says a lot, as does your detailed review here.
Off to the bookstore…
[...] 3 Keep Your Eyes on These: The Memory of Water by Karen White My Father’s Paradise by Ariel Sabar *The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry [...]
[...] been a pretty good reading week here in Readerville. I finished and reviewed The Glass Castle and The Lace Reader, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed (click on title for my review) , and I’m about two-thirds [...]
[...] Keep Your Eyes on These: My Father’s Paradise by Ariel Sabar The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry *What Happened to Anna K. by Irina [...]
[...] great pleasure of reading The Lace Reader, Brunonia Barry’s breathtaking debut novel (click here to read my review). It begins: “My name is Towner Whitney. No, that’s not exactly true. [...]
[...] Both The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (my review is here) and The Lace Reader (read my review) were released today. I loved them both and strongly recommend that you head over to your [...]
[...] a surprise ending that left me absolutely breathless and in awe of her great talent (read my review here). I can’t recommend these two highly [...]
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