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The Lace Reader: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Brunonia Barry
Publisher: William Morrow
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  157 reviews
Sales Rank: 4682
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0061624764
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780061624766
ASIN: 0061624764
Publication Date: August 1, 2008
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: Brunonia Barry dreamt she saw a prophecy in a piece of lace, a vision so potent she spun it into a novel. The Lace Reader retains the strange magic of a vivid dream, though Barry's portrayal of modern-day Salem, Massachusetts--with its fascinating cast of eccentrics--is reportedly spot-on. Some of its stranger residents include generations of Whitney women, with a gift for seeing the future in the lace they make. Towner Whitney, back to Salem from self-imposed exile on the West Coast, has plans for recuperation that evaporate with her great-aunt Eva's mysterious drowning. Fighting fear from a traumatic adolescence she can barely remember, Towner digs in for answers. But questions compound with the disappearance of a young woman under the thrall of a local fire-and-brimstone preacher, whose history of violence against Whitney women makes the situation personal for Towner. Her role in cop John Rafferty's investigation sparks a tentative romance. And as they scramble to avert disaster, the past that had slipped through the gaps in Towner's memory explodes into the present with a violence that capsizes her concept of truth. Readers will look back at the story in a new light, picking out the clues in this complex, lovely piece of work. --Mari Malcolm
Product Description
Every gift has a price . . . Every piece of lace has a secret . . . 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. . . . Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator of The Lace Reader, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations, but the disappearance of two women brings Towner home to Salem and the truth about the death of her twin sister to light. The Lace Reader is a mesmerizing tale that spirals into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths in which the reader quickly finds it's nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction, but as Towner Whitney points out early on in the novel, "There are no accidents."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 152 more reviews...
 great promise, ultimately disappointing July 25, 2008
T. Fraser (Texas Hill Country, USA)
73 out of 83 found this review helpful
My mother, who is now 75, told me of reading a suggestion last year; specifically, how to decide whether to continue reading a book to the end. On the assumption that as one gets older, one has less time to waste, the suggestion was to subtract one's age from 100 and give that many pages for a book to "hook" you, the reader. Thus, by age 99, authors are given little margin for error. This one "hooked" me sufficiently to be read at age 82. And continued to hook me for the next 340-some-odd pages. As though taking blocks out of a bucket and carefully laying them together for a complex and exotic construction, Barry lays out clues and tidbits that tantalize the reader. After such careful construction building a masterful story, Barry simply upends the bucket and dumps the remaining blocks on the reader in an ending reminiscent of "The Sixth Sense". This plot twist comes too harshly, is too disjointed and confusing, and is ultimately disappointing.
 The most difficult review I've ever written ... July 26, 2008
A. G. (Michigan)
54 out of 62 found this review helpful
... because what to say about this brilliant book without surrendering its secrets? Other readers compare it to The Sixth Sense, and I can't disagree. This is a novel that, once finished, compels you to go back and start again. And once the end has stripped you of your original assumptions, the truth behind Towner's slant on earlier scenes springs out so that you wonder how you missed it. However, while the end is the most obvious conversation point of the book, it has merit beyond its final twist.
At first, Towner seems slightly flat and slow to develop, but by the end, a look back to understand the "whole" Towner reveals her depth. She and Rafferty are memorable and sympathetic (I did wish for more of Rafferty), but even secondary characters like Eva, May, Ann, and Jack are given the breath of realism. The setting is almost a character in itself, a living patchwork of place and time.
Those who call this book a "page-turner" seem to be labeling it from the perspective of having finished it. The swelling tension of the last hundred pages is difficult to put down, but the first hundred certainly do not skim past (they might more so the second time around as one scours for clues to the truth). This book creeps at first, wraps tendrils around its readers to pull us in and under, slowly builds our trust in Towner as narrator, even though she's told us from page one, "I lie all the time." By mid-book, we see the world through Towner's eyes and forget that she's warned us not to.
Brunonia Barry astutely writes Rafferty's voice more straightforward and less poetic than Towner's. The two chapters toward the end, which come from two secondary characters, jarred me a bit, but their perspectives are necessary to a full understanding of events. Normally a point-of-view pedant, I was able to forgive this in appreciation of the entire book.
Barry's style does fluctuate somewhat; she can write one paragraph of lovely or stunning imagery and the next of lackluster sentences like "He parked the car. He walked her to the door." At times, I felt as if I were reading a juxtaposition of Jodi Picoult and Ernest Hemingway. However, I'd be unfair not to note that I have the advance copy of this book, not the final edit. Some of the stilted paragraphs may well be re-worked by the time this book hits the shelves. If not, I still can't consider this a fatal flaw; the story is too good for that.
If you love a story constructed around point of view, if you love a story of broken people who find each other and don't give up on healing, if you love a story whose seemingly scrambled threads is really a perfect pattern ... if you love good literature, give your time to this book. It will reward you.
 Not Your Grannies Lace July 26, 2008
zphage
53 out of 65 found this review helpful
Far from the lace doilies that sit on the furniture and collect dust, this story lives like the lace wrapped around ones shoulders, collecting the secrets women whisper in each other's ears. Brunonia Barry is an artful weaver of woman's tales and their relationships with each other. While she speaks of magic in the lace and crafts of the spinners and witches in her story, the real magic lies in the power of woman supporting woman in the pivotal moments of their lives.
The point of view passes between Towner, the main character, and the narrator. Towner is a self described liar, and the narrator always tells the truth, you must pay careful attention to the words if you want to understand when and even if Towner knows she is lying. Set in Salem Massachusetts, Towner returns home for her Aunt Eve's funeral, and must learn to allow the lace to tell its story so she can finally see the truth of who she is and what she and the women in her family have survived by having each other. The lace reveals the future and unveils the past.
If you enjoyed `The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood', `The Lovely Bones', or `The Bluest Eyes', this novel is for you.
A disappointment July 23, 2008
Frank J. Konopka (Shamokin, PA)
30 out of 45 found this review helpful
I really looked forward to reading this book. The excerpts from the reviews were ecstatic in its praise, and the little blurb about the book was intriguing. Unfortunately, I really did not enjoy this work. It's difficult to take a book seriously when the narrator is named Towner and her brother is called Beezer (this is not "to Kill A Mockingbird after all). Reading through this book was like swimming in molasses! It took an ungodly amount of time for the plot(?) to kick in, and by then I had just about lost interest. I actually found it almost impossible to stay awake while reading. Judging from the high stars given this work by other reviewers I'm definitely in a minority (possibly of one), but I "call 'em as I see 'em, and that's how I feel about this book. I would not recommend it to anyone!
Are you a good witch or a bad witch? August 6, 2008
Linda (CT, United States)
22 out of 28 found this review helpful
Brunonia Barry's impressive debut novel is not set in Kansas, but in Salem, MA, forever infamous as the home of witches and other "crazies". The site of the tragic trials in 1692 is like no other town in the US. Setting her story of a mentally unbalanced young woman in Salem was a brilliant choice, because its foggy, mystical elements are more easily accepted against that most eccentric of backgrounds.
Protagonist Towner (Sophya) Whitney starts telling us her biographical tale by warning us not to believe her. She is a self-described liar, but having reached the end of the narrative (in which another point of view is also provided), I do not regard her as untruthful so much as deeply, seriously deluded, a fearful patient in denial so impenetrable that it requires breaking down with a sledge hammer. Towner's personal and psychological odyssey is a scary one, and the difficulty she experiences in coming to terms with it is fully understandable. This is an evocative page turner of a novel, and it is easy to fall under its spell. This book belongs on the shelf along side the likes of Rebecca, The Catcher in the Rye, and Housekeeping.
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