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