The Lace Reader

I really enjoyed Brunonia Barry's The Lace Reader. Having just finished writing about one unreliable narrator, Lucy Snowe, in Villette, it's ironic that the very next novel I read eerily follows stylistically in suit.
Towner Whitney discloses this to the reader from the very beginning. There's nothing better than a protagonist who is a truthful liar to set the stage for the contemporary gothic.

"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."

Towner Whitney comes from a long line of lace reading Whitney women from Salem. (Yes, Salem of the"Let's burn them witches at the stake" Salem)

"Around every corner of Salem lurks a history lesson. Dead ahead as I walk is the Custom house with its gold roof. This is where Hawthorne worked his day job, an appointed position as clerk. Using the locals as subject matter, revealing their secrets, Hawthorne basically wrote his way out of this town, escaping west to Concord before the townspeople remembered their talent with the old tar and feathers. Still, now they celebrate Hawthorne as their own. The same way they celebrate the witches, who never existed at all in the days of the witch trials but who thrive here in great numbers now."

Towner has been in California for the past 15 years in what appears to be a self imposed exile and is called back home because of the disappearance of her elderly great- aunt Eva.

I won't go into too many particulars because this is the type of book that can spoil quickly if too much is discussed ahead of time. I read a few reviews that spoke to the ending of this story and so I was able to solve the mystery slightly ahead of where it would have been most satisfying - at the end. I doubt I could ever watch The Sixth Sense again because of this idea of once you "get it" the magic, the mystical, and the mystery, disappear. That movie was powerful for me because I "missed it" and then I "got it". Well, in truth, I'm embarrassed that I totally missed the whole thing until the end; I just felt stupider than all my friends who apparently tapped into their inner clairvoyance and solved it within moments. Hmmm.

The hard thing about really good first novels as a reader is waiting for the really good second novel. Barry's next book, The Map of True Places is due to be released May 4, 2010. Click the link and you can download and read the opening chapters.




Now if only Diane Setterfield would publish a second. If you have not read her first, The Thirteenth Tale, then put it on your TBR list. Riveting.

Teaser Tuesdays

Miz B and Teaser Tuesdays asks you to: Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two sentences from somewhere on that page. Be careful not to include spoilers. You also need to include the title and author of the book that you're getting the "teaser" from... that way people can add it to their TBR lists if they like the teaser you've given.

This week's teaser is also from The Lace Reader. My reading is at a much slower pace this month. I'll review this book soon, as I'm close to finishing. Fabulous contemporary gothic. Really enjoying it. I've heard the ending is quite surprising... almost hate to get there.

"He put it down in front of the dog, who started to drink. He looks like Skybo, she said. Rafferty remembered the name. Skybo had been her first dog, the one Cal had killed. He'd read that in her journal, and Eva had told him about it as well. Skybo had been her friend and protector. So the fact that this dog looked like Skybo gave them an immediate connection." Chapter 23

Teaser Tuesdays

Miz B and Teaser Tuesdays asks you to: Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two sentences from somewhere on that page. Be careful not to include spoilers. You also need to include the title and author of the book that you're getting the "teaser" from... that way people can add it to their TBR lists if they like the teaser you've given.

This week's teaser comes from the debut novel by Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader (2009).
"Some people would consider these women a coven. It was logical, with witches everywhere in Salem now, to consider any group of women a coven, especially a group that refers to itself as the Circle. Eva had laughed at him when he'd told her that, telling him to get with it, that it wasn't named after witches but after the old-time ladies sewing circles that women used to have. Still, he thought it could be misinterpreted." (Chapter 7)

“Drawing comparisons to memorable gothic novels, including Rebecca and The Thirteenth Tale. Barry’s modern-day story of Towner Whitney, who has the psychic gift to read the future in lace patterns, is equally complex but darker in subject matter…Repressed memories emerge. Violent confrontations, reminiscent of the hysteria of the witch trials, explode in this complex novel…The novel’s gripping and shocking conclusion is a testament to Barry’s creativity.”
USA Today

Villette

It took me two weeks to finish Charlotte Bronte's last work, Villette. I persisted with this difficult read mainly because of the All About the Bronte's challenge that I have entered. I just don't like to give up on something once I have started. This lengthy tome was very, very different from my beloved Jane Eyre, but in the end almost as good.
I freely admit that I had to rely heavily on the analysis of a Villette book study to help me analyze each chapter and to fill in the gaps of understanding that occurred with the highly stylized form of writing that Bronte used in this novel that included the use of a most unreliable narrator, Lucy Snowe. The other obstacle that I had to overcome was the astonishing lack of plot. One might say this book was more about emotion than plot.
I was a ways into this book when I realized that if I were a young student, I'd probably have known to abandon it based on "the five finger rule." You might remember that rule. If you can count five words on a page that you don't recognize or understand, than perhaps this book is not a great choice for you, right now. With Villette I had the reverse five finger rule. I many times only understood five words on a page. My high school French did not serve me well to translate the amount of dialogue written in this language. As well, Bronte really seemed to wax bombastic with her chosen vocabulary, '...and I suddenly felt all the dishonor of my diffidence - all the pusillanimity of my slackness to aspire." (Chapter XIII Madame Beck)
Pusillanimous: from latin, lacking courage and resolution: marked by contemptible timidity
(Merriam Webster's online dictionary)
While I concur that pusillanimity was perhaps the perfect word for this passage, I discovered unknown terms in every chapter and doing research as I read soon became taxing. The reader has to work very hard to discover the treasure that this novel truly is; it is not handed to the reader in the way as Jane Eyre.
I also found it important to understand the strong connections between Lucy Snowe and Charlotte Bronte. It was precisely this blurring of the author's experience being the narrator's experience that held my interest. Lucy was a plain, poor woman of good heritage, mostly invisible to society, but strange in the sense that she coveted wisdom, liberty and her independence. She longed for love, but not at the expense of her independence. This was quite well established through the tension created by Lucy's Protestantism and M. Paul's Catholicism.
Charlotte had by this point in her short life lost all of her siblings (2 sisters early on to tuberculosis - the experience she writes about in Jane Eyre at Lowood School, her only brother succombed to the effects of alcoholism and drug addiction, and of course, Emily and Anne to tuberculosis) and had known the experience of loving a married man that could never be hers (M. Heger).
I was originally disappointed by the gothic nature of the story and the appearance of the 'Grey Nun.' Gothic subplots are always amongst my favourites (best ever, Dicken's Miss Havisham from Great Expectations) and I was left feeling that Lucy's nun was more of a comedic farce than a tragic, eerie presence in the story. Which in fact, was exactly what this turned out to be when all was revealed by Ginevra. A great ruse so two lovers could meet within the walls of the boarding school. Then I thought, why would Bronte do this? Genius really, in a story where the main character is so lost, so abandoned, so invisible and sad... Lucy herself is the gothic-ness of the story. The legend of the Grey Nun, quite tragic itself, is extorted upon and made ridiculous. Nice irony Charlotte!
The following videos were posted on Youtube by Ksotikoula who made slideshow clips of the Bronte's to the audio of a radio program where the host invited 3 university professors to talk about Villette. The subtitles are in Greek.

Teaser Tuesdays

Miz B and Teaser Tuesdays asks you to:

Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page.

Share with us two sentences from somewhere on that page. Be careful not to include spoilers.

You also need to include the title and author of the book that you're getting the "teaser" from... that way people can add it to their TBR lists if they like the teaser you've given.

This week's teaser comes from Villette (1853) by Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte).

From Chapter IX, Isidore:

Mrs. Cholmondeley - her chaperon - a gay, fashionable lady, invited her whenever she had company at her own house, and sometimes took her to evening-parties at the houses of her acquaintance. Ginevra perfectly approved this mode of procedure: it had but one inconvenience; she was obliged to be well dressed, and she had not money to buy variety of dresses. All her thoughts turned on this difficulty ; her whole soul was occupied with expedients for effecting its solution. It was wonderful to witness the activity of her otherwise indolent mind on this point, and to see the much-daring intrepidity to which she was spurred by a sense of necessity, and the wish to shine.