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214th out of 2,655 books
—
7,352 voters
The Lace Reader
by
Brunonia Barry (Goodreads Author)
Look into the lace? When the eyes begin to fill with tears and the patience is long exhausted, there will appear a glimpse of something not quite seen... In this moment, an image will begin to form? in the space between what is real and what is only imagined. Can you read your future in a piece of lace? All of the Whitney women can. But the last time Towner read, it killed...more
Paperback, 353 pages
Published
July 31st 2007
by Flap Jacket Press
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If you liked THE LIFE OF PI, you might like this book. I didn't, and I wasn't real fond of this one by the time I got to the end of it. If that's a spoiler, so be it. This book actually made me mad.
Okay, so this book is about a family of women with "the sight," who can read a person's future through lace. Except there's very little actual lace reading that goes on in the book. There's a fair bit of lace making, but no reading. The heroine has been estranged from her relatives, living on the oppo...more
Okay, so this book is about a family of women with "the sight," who can read a person's future through lace. Except there's very little actual lace reading that goes on in the book. There's a fair bit of lace making, but no reading. The heroine has been estranged from her relatives, living on the oppo...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This book didn’t quite live up to my expectations for it but overall, I thought it was okay. That makes me a little sad because there were several elements to this book that seemed like they would be wildly interesting when they were all mixed together in the same book and I was hoping to really love it. A quick rundown of the things that happened include the mysterious death of Eva Whitney, suicide, the disappearance of a young woman, mental illness, sexual abuse, rape, witchcraft, fortune-tell...more
Jul 01, 2008
Stacey
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Anyone
Recommended to Stacey by:
ARC
Shelves:
fiction
Ever found yourself finishing a book out of obligation, to the book itself? That vague but relentless guilt that settles in when you have figured out exactly where this story is going and where it will wind up, but you started the book, so you really ought to finish it? Go to your favorite bookseller and pick up Brunonia Barry’s The Lace Reader today. Now.
First, to give props where props are due, I apologize, Ms Barry. I thought I had it all figured out. I loved Towner, finding a woman I would l...more
First, to give props where props are due, I apologize, Ms Barry. I thought I had it all figured out. I loved Towner, finding a woman I would l...more
Towner Whitney is forced to return to Salem MA, after an absence of almost 15 years, when her Great-Aunt Eva goes missing. Once she is back in Salem Towner soon finds out that she will need to confront the ghosts of her past in order to move on into her future. Through a series of flashbacks and memories the reader finds out that the Whitney family is not quite what they seem. The story is filled with a cast of eccentric characters from Towner's mother May who refuses to step a foot off the isla...more
There were things I definitely liked about this book, the psychology for one and the visual of Salem, MA for another, but the organization of the book bothered me.
-Over a hundred pages into it, Barry shifts POVs and even then jumps around a bit between perspectives.
-Twice, she uses documents to tell her story, which is a great literary technique, but again they come late in the book and the second one takes up sixty pages. It was a little jarring (ironically, those sixty pages were my favorite...more
-Over a hundred pages into it, Barry shifts POVs and even then jumps around a bit between perspectives.
-Twice, she uses documents to tell her story, which is a great literary technique, but again they come late in the book and the second one takes up sixty pages. It was a little jarring (ironically, those sixty pages were my favorite...more
I wanted to read The Lace Reader because it is set in Salem, Massachusetts, and it's about a family of women with the gift of reading fortunes in lace. Each chapter starts with a little excepts from "The Lace Reader's Guide" about how to make or read lace as we follow Towner Whitney's return to Salem after a decade's absense following the suicide of her twin sister.
Towner returns when her great-aunt Eva, a gifted lace reader, goes missing. Towner has the gift, too, as well as hallucinations and...more
Towner returns when her great-aunt Eva, a gifted lace reader, goes missing. Towner has the gift, too, as well as hallucinations and...more
Salem, Massachusetts is an unusual town. And the Whitneys are the most unusual family in Salem. Their family roots in Salem go back hundreds of years. They fit right in with the eccentric witches, most of the Whitney women have the ability to sense bits of people's thoughts and see glimpses of the future when they look through a piece of lace.
Towner Whitney is in her early thirties and she has just returned to Salem from her self imposed exile in California because her beloved Great Aunt Eva ha...more
Towner Whitney is in her early thirties and she has just returned to Salem from her self imposed exile in California because her beloved Great Aunt Eva ha...more
My biggest issue with this book was the switching of points of view. I don't feel that it added all that much to the story, except to leave us all the more confused by the end. This story would have best been told completely in 3rd person, saving us the momentary pull out of the story when we get to a new chapter and realize that this isn't Towner's point of view. In the end, it feels as though the only reason for the chapters in Towner's pov were solely to give us the effect of confusion at the...more
The concept gets an A, the execution gets a C. The book is just a mess! In serious need of editing and rearrangement. I was often confused because it was hard to tell reality from dreams from hallucinations from delusions from memories. There were a lot of good ideas, but so many of them were totally unnecessary and others weren't fully fleshed-out. The author should have saved some of those ideas for other stories and developed them further (and maybe she will). As the book went on, the author...more
My boss forced me to read this, and I'm really glad she did. A fabulously unreliable narrator leads to a lovely twist at the end. And Barry's descriptions of Salem, Mass., are so spot-on that anyone who has ever toured there even once will recognize certain landmarks.
When I first saw this book cover, I had a mental Will Smith moment: “Awwww, hell no!” I thought it was the same as those novels centered around knitting or quilting but that lace was the new vehicle. Boy, was I wrong! It’s about so much more than lace reading (a kind of fortune telling based on the reading of lace), but I’m not here to plot summarize. I’ll say what I always say when I think a story is full of excellent twists. Be careful which reviews you read! I loved, loved, loved this story....more
All of the Whitney women can read the future in a piece of lace, but Towner hasn't read lace since her sister committed suicide and she was institutionalized. But Towner is confronted again by her prophetic past and convoluted family history when she returns home to Salem, Massachusetts after her great aunt Eva goes missing. This book has a promising premise of a complex family history, prophecies, and unreliable narrators; the setting is realistic and detailed, and Barry has a haunting narrativ...more
Aug 15, 2008
Myridian
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
book-crossing
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Jun 20, 2008
Rosee
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
All of my best friends!
Recommended to Rosee by:
HarperCollins
As a librarian and a lover of the written word, I read hundreds of books every year. Some of those books stand out as exceptional, and then there are those that I will never forget. The Lace reader falls into this last category. Protagonist Towner Whitney journeys back to her hometown of Salem, Mass. to try to heal old wounds and spend time with the person who understands her most – her beloved great aunt Eva. Eva understands all to well the burden that Towner carries – the ability to see the fu...more
This book wasn't as good as I thought it would be, given all the press it's been getting. I mean, come on already! I hear about it all the time. I do think it's pretty amazing how this self-published author has now signed with HarperCollins or some other big publisher...but about the book. It was a pretty good story with lots of plot twists and an interesting theme exploring truth and reality, but the "surprise ending" is dumped on you like a ton of bricks, and besides, I had already figured it...more
At the end of a perfect summer day when the setting sun casts that net of skin-kissing balmy warmth over the land, if you're lucky enough to be driving down a traffic-less country backroad with all the windows open -- or just looking out the window of a city bus at that light hitting the sides of buildings at new and interesting angles, illuminating parts of them you rarely get to see -- you know how sometimes it actually feels like you're on drugs? This book lulls you into exactly that pleasant...more
I really liked this book. I liked the combination of mystery, suspense, romance, family, psychology. It really grabbed my attention at the beginning and kept it all the way through. There were surprises I didn't see coming and now I want to go back and read it again with that perspective! It is provacative and challenging in many respects, so be prepared for that. It isn't an easy, entertaining read--but one that makes you think, hypothesize, and wonder. I enjoyed it a lot.
Reading this book is like falling asleep in a moderately interesting class. A moment flutters by that briefly captures your imagination, but mainly things are just droning along. Droning, that is, until the last moment when the teacher starts ranting and throwing things. Wow! I'm awake, I'm awake--what's happening? This book has one of those crazy twist endings that just doesn't make sense, and you suspect that you missed something since you were, after all, practically asleep. But you didn't. I...more
I liked this book at first because of the visual setting of Salem and Marblehead, the unusual dysfunctional family, and the mystery of the aunt's death. As the story progresses it just gets tangled in its own web or lace as it were, a story in search of a flashy ending which is provided but somehow unsatisfying.
I'm not sure how to review this book. It was a ride - sometimes confusing and bumpy. At other times it was mezmerising. I loved the characters. Each had unique but complex personalities.
The book begins with Towner Whitney stating that she is crazy and that she lies. She returns to Salem when she learns that her great aunt is missing. In no time, she is immersed in the confusing family dynamics that surrounded her as a child.
To me, the story is about perceptions, from the lace readings the Whit...more
The book begins with Towner Whitney stating that she is crazy and that she lies. She returns to Salem when she learns that her great aunt is missing. In no time, she is immersed in the confusing family dynamics that surrounded her as a child.
To me, the story is about perceptions, from the lace readings the Whit...more
"Sometimes when you look back, you can point to a time when your world shifts and heads in another direction. In lace reading this is called the "still point. Eva says it's the point around which everything pivots and real patterns start to emerge" (28).
"You're an interesting woman," he says. "You walk that line." What line is that? The line that by its very definition is not a line but a crack. One I slipped into a long time ago. He thinks before he speaks. "The one between the real world and...more
"You're an interesting woman," he says. "You walk that line." What line is that? The line that by its very definition is not a line but a crack. One I slipped into a long time ago. He thinks before he speaks. "The one between the real world and...more
Like a lot of books I've had on my wish list, I first heard about this book on NPR while driving in the car. It was August 4th, 2008 and I was listening to The Diane Rehm Show and she was interviewing Brunonia Barry on her show (click the link to listen to the interview). I fell in love with the book then, but it took me about two years to finally read it. I wish I had read it the very next day.
This was a haunting story the plays around with reality while exploring identity and family secrets. T...more
This was a haunting story the plays around with reality while exploring identity and family secrets. T...more
There were a couple of things that drew me to this book -- the idea of lace reading as a way of prophecy or fortune telling of sorts, the setting of Salem and the islands nearby, a hint at mystery and supernatural things. But I should have been warned off by two things. First the friend who gave this to me gave it a lukewarm recommendation, and second, the author comes flat out and tells us in the beginning that the narrator should not be trusted. I guess if there had been more of the lace-readi...more
THE LACE READER (Novel/Susp-Towner Whitney-Mass-Cont) - VG
Barry, Brunonia – 1st book
Wm. Morrow, 2008, ARC – ISBN: 9780061688584
First Sentence: My name is Towner Whitney.
Towner Whitney grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, a town known for the witch trials in the 1600s and where, in the present, witches have become a major economic asset; except to Cal and his group of “Calvinist” religious fanatics. Tower descends from a family of women who read the future using lace as the medium.
Having lived in Ca...more
Barry, Brunonia – 1st book
Wm. Morrow, 2008, ARC – ISBN: 9780061688584
First Sentence: My name is Towner Whitney.
Towner Whitney grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, a town known for the witch trials in the 1600s and where, in the present, witches have become a major economic asset; except to Cal and his group of “Calvinist” religious fanatics. Tower descends from a family of women who read the future using lace as the medium.
Having lived in Ca...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Sep 12, 2008
Katie
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Readers willing to give an author the benefit of the doubt.
Recommended to Katie by:
Bookpage among other publications
So I kept hearing great things about this book and I picked it up from the library based on several recommendations.
I usually give a book about 50 pages before I decide if I continue, but I found myself on page 75 still deciding. The book starts out kind of slow, despite some exciting events, but since you don't know the characters you're not quite invested yet. I'm glad I stuck with it because there's a fun ending (predictable, but fun) and I enjoyed the setting (Salem) and plotting (interesti...more
I usually give a book about 50 pages before I decide if I continue, but I found myself on page 75 still deciding. The book starts out kind of slow, despite some exciting events, but since you don't know the characters you're not quite invested yet. I'm glad I stuck with it because there's a fun ending (predictable, but fun) and I enjoyed the setting (Salem) and plotting (interesti...more
Nov 16, 2008
Blair
marked it as to-read
I'll admit it: I was first drawn to this book because of the story behind it. A "woman of a certain age" publishes her first book and has unimagined success. Good for Brunonia Barry! I love to see a writing "sister" have this kind of fairy tale ending.
I can certainly identify with the struggle to get published. I never considered taking Barry's path, though. She and her husband self-published originally, and a year later "The Lace Reader" was picked up by Harper Collins.
I will confess that I a...more
I can certainly identify with the struggle to get published. I never considered taking Barry's path, though. She and her husband self-published originally, and a year later "The Lace Reader" was picked up by Harper Collins.
I will confess that I a...more
Jul 15, 2008
Alison
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Anyone who likes Alice Hoffman novels or magic, but beware it's dark!
Textiles are magic blah blah blah, anyone who knows me knows why and how I can say that with a yawn. However, I'd recommend this one because, it's (for lack of a better way to say this) "well-designed." Some reviewers didn't like the structure but I did, it's three-fold in that there's Towner's voice in first person, the narrator's voice in third person and then the "excerpts" from Eva's book on lace reading, which are sort of like the recipes in "Like Water for Chocolate." The comparison to Ali...more
Aug 02, 2008
Jackie
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
work-review-related-reading,
5-star
The imagination of Brunonia Barry seems limitless--from it she creates a whole history and methodology of divination (lace reading is her brainchild), then weaves it through a complex family tale full of surprises. This book is extremely difficult to put down once you dive into it--the cast of characters could keep a bookclub busy through many pots of coffee. Especially the late in the game major plot twist and what it means for all of the characters. It's set in modern Salem, with all of it's n...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lyndley *SPOILER ALERT* | 18 | 162 | Aug 03, 2012 07:46pm | |
| How's the language in this book? | 10 | 145 | Mar 25, 2012 08:51pm | |
| Deadline | 5 | 50 | Aug 31, 2011 12:38pm |
Born and raised in Massachusetts, Brunonia Barry studied literature and creative writing at Green Mountain College in Vermont and at the University of New Hampshire and was one of the founding members of the Portland Stage Company. While still an undergraduate at UNH, Barry spent a year living in Dublin and auditing Trinity College classes on James Joyce's Ulysses.
Barry's love of theater led to a...more
More about Brunonia Barry...
Barry's love of theater led to a...more
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“There is lace in every living thing: the bare branches of winter, the patterns of clouds, the surface of water as it ripples int he breeze.... Even a wild dog's matted fur shows a lacy pattern if you look at it closely enough.”
—
16 people liked it
“I'll pit my God against your god any day, I say to the Calvinists. It's not their god I'm praying to.... The God I'm praying to is neither male nor female. My God is the one who exists apart from all of men's agendas, the God who takes you away when there is no possible place you can go.”
—
15 people liked it
More quotes…
But you can't say you were misled. She says...more
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