The Lace Reader: a book review

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

William Morrow  2006     $24.95     ISBN  978-0-06-162476-6

I have not seen a book review for this title on Gather, and having just finished reading it, I feel that I should rectify that. This book is a sleeper hit that made it's own friends, sort of in the tradition of Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Originally self published in 2006, The Lace Reader only became widely read, and critically praised, in 2008.

At heart, this weird novel is sort of a gothic thriller/romance, the latest in a long series of books that go back through Daphne du Maurier' Rebecca to the Bronte sisters' twin tales, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. It centers on the Whitney family of Salem, Massachusetts, an odd clan that practices, through the female line, the arcane and mysterious art of telling futures in the patterns of pieces of lace.

Towner Whitney returns to Salem to attend the funeral of her Great Aunt Eva, the matriarch of the family who has died under mysterious circumstances. The back story is revealed, the torturous tale of Towner's childhood, adolescent crises, shock treatment in a mental ward, and return to deal with her demons. Mistaken identities, family secrets, suicides, and assaults abound.

It could be said that debut novelist Barry throws everything at the reader but the kitchen sink here. But my take on it is that she does so cleverly and with grace. She shows a cool command of most of the tools in the writer's toolbox. There is a very unreliable narrator, strong supporting characters, plot twists that make sense, and a strong sense of community and place in a coastal Massachusetts community. There is a dramatic value to her portrayal of one of the oldest american communities as it tries to deal with the past in creative ways, but is troubled by the interaction of different religious groups and townies/islanders/tourists. I enjoyed the scene in which a religious cult attempts to burn down the house of someone that they consider a witch, and a crowd of tourists forms, wrongly assuming that it is a local color event staged for their benefit!

I recommend this novel. If you are not hooked in the first 50 pages, keep going, because it will grow on you. I look forward to Barry's next book, if she chooses to write another. The story of how she struggled to tell this tale and get it published is told here on gather by Richard Owl Mirror, but you need to know that the end product was worth it.