The Lace Reader: A Novel
by Brunonia Barry
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Book Summary Information
Author: Brunonia BarryEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-07-29
ISBN: 0061624764
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: William Morrow
Product features:
- First Edition
- Hardback
- Collectible
- Brunonia Barry
- Best Seller
Book Reviews of The Lace Reader: A Novel
Book Review: A weird Wild Trip through literature
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one strange book. thirty something Towner Whitney is living in California when she receives a phone call from her brother telling her that great aunt Eva has disappeared. Towner has always loved Eva who has always loved Turner in return. Towner has changed her name from Sophya and moved to California to get away from her hometown of Salem. Too many bad things have happened here. There are too many bad memories. Towner had lived with Eva when she was a teenager and had to get away from her mother, May, with whom she was constantly fighting with. She went to pieces when her twin sister, Lyndley, leaped from a cliff into the ocean and drowned. She meant to commit suicide. Towner and Lyndley's boyfriend Jack tried to save her but couldn't. Lyndley's body was never found. Lyndley was wild and impulsive and was constantly getting Towner into trouble. This was the reason Towner and May fought constantly. Towner only saw Lyndley for a short time during the summer when Lyndley's adopted parents came to Salem from Florida. the girls didn't know each other very well but when the twins became teenagers Lyndley became wilder and wilder and pulling Towner also into trouble. When Lyndley committed suicide Towner became uncontroable.
The book seems to go back in time before Christianity, witches, lace reading, spells, darkness, ghosts and many other unspeakable occurances. Then the book returns to Salem during the witch burning. At present, witches are quite popular and attract tourists.
The Whitney women are strange. Eva owns a nice tea house and gives lace readings. It is a beautiful old New England home and attracts tourists. Eva is a good business woman May has given one of her children away to her half sister because Emma can't have children of her own. Towner has a younger brother Beezer. May lives on Yellow Dog Island and never leaves her island. She has opened her home to abused and abandoned women and their children and tries to rehabilite them.
Then there is the odd couple, Cal and Emma. Cal is evil, but supposedly became religious, repented and founded a cult. He and the witches are at odds. Repent evil ones he says and is always causing trouble with everyone. But his followers feel he is a saint. Emma is blind and brain damaged due to a beating from Cal before he became religious and repentant. He has beaten her constantly s before he repented. May hates him because what he has done to her half sister. Cal claims to have found God but uses his cult to control people and get to know pretty young girls too well. Wimpy, husband dominated Emma, whose husband beat her blind and senseless, is strange because she is the daughter of strong, independent Eva and the half sister of May who opens her home to women in need. Both are strong women while Emma is contemptible returning back to her husband. She was living on Yellow Dog Island with May while her husband is busy involving himself with pretty young ladies.
Back to Lyndley, the adopted daugher of Cal and Emma and the twin of Towner. She was the stronger and wilder of the twins. The two were close before they were born. When Towner returns to Salem and Yellow Dog Island she begins having flashbacks of all kinds, things that happened when she was growing up, events that she would have liked to forget ever happened. After the suicide May sent Towner to live with her great aunt Eva because she had become uncontrollable with grief. She told her son when he came home from boarding school to stay with Eva also. Towner was aghast at how her mother chased her children from her home. May was good to Emma and nursed her back to health wne Cal broke her jaw and badly bruised her face. May tried to deter Emma from going back to her husband but Emma loved Cal.
This part of the country is an old part of America which was settled earlier than much of the country. That area is a land of both land and water, tiny islands are located off the coast, people live on boats and own homes on islands, these are water people. This is a very historic part of the country. This is an area of much learning, many literary people and from New England Ms Berry found the reason for her book.
Eva has left her beautiful old home to Towner. Towner has met Rafferty whe she feels she loves. Rafferty has problems of his own. Towner has thought of selling the old homestead but changes her mind. Perhaps she will move into lace reading. It is in her blood. Eva would want that.
Salem is such a historic town and has become very touristy. This is a good setting for Ms. Berry's book. Well worth reading and different.
Summary of The Lace Reader: A Novel
Every gift has a price . . . every piece of lace has a secret.
Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator, 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. Now the disappearance of two women is bringing Towner back home to Salem?and is bringing to light the shocking truth about the death of her twin sister.
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
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