Product Details:
Publisher: Harper Press
Paperback, 400 pages
Release date: February 4th 2010.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Plot Description:
Drawn by family. Driven by fear. Haunted by fate. Would knowing the future be a gift or a burden? Or even a curse!? The Whitney women of Salem, Massachusetts are renowned for reading the future in the patterns of lace. But the future doesn't always bring good news -- as Towner Whitney knows all too well. When she was just fifteen her gift sent her whole world crashing to pieces. She predicted -- and then witnessed -- something so horrific that she vowed never to read lace again, and fled her home and family for good. Salem is a place of ghosts for Towner, and she swore she would never return. Yet family is a powerful tie. So it is that fifteen years later, Towner finds herself back in Salem. Her beloved Great Aunt Eva has suddenly disappeared -- and when you've lived a life like Eva's, that could mean real trouble. But Salem is wreathed in sickly shadows and whispered half-memories. It's fast becoming clear that the ghosts of Towner's fractured past have not been brought fully into the light. And with them comes the threat of terrifying new disaster. A literary page-turner with depth, narrative power and a story that novels like 'The Thirteenth Tale' can only dream of, 'The Lace Reader' is a bewitching and tightly plotted read.
I was pretty excited to read this book, but it proved to be somewhat of a disappointment for me. I loved the premise of the book, and was all ready to settle down to a gothic mystery involving witchcraft, fortune telling and long kept family secrets, and while all these elements and more are in place, Barry takes them in a totally different direction to what I was expecting.
First off, even though the book is overloaded with plot elements, it’s actually very slow moving, and for me it was even boring in parts. For the first one hundred pages or so, nothing much happens. Also, I found the idea of lace-reading itself quite unappealing, so that didn’t help with my enjoyment of the book. A lot of the dialogue is long and rambling, overly descriptive when it doesn’t need to be, while frustratingly Barry shifts between past, present and dream worlds with a fervour which is hard to keep track of .
At the start of the book we are introduced to out female protagonist Towner Whitney. She introduces herself by telling the reader to never believe her because she lies ‘all the time’ and is ‘a crazy woman’. She has even lied to us about her real name. From this point on I questioned everything she said as a narrator. It was a good move on my part, that’s all I’ll say. I never really warmed to Towner, which was maybe another reason why I didn’t really enjoy the book. When Barry decides to introduce a romantic interest for Towner, thus adding yet another plot element to the book, it didn’t really work for me. I guess I found her quite cold and distant, and the romantic aspect of the story quite forced.
One thing I did like about the book was the setting of Salem, the merging between past and present and the historical elements of the book. This was well crafted. There was, however, a religious aspect to the book which I really didn't enjoy.
Without giving too much away, I will say that the reader may be surprised by the ending of the book. I had figured out elements of it, and I thought the ending was both haunting and sad. It introduced some disturbing aspects to the story, and also gave me a greater understanding of Towner.
Overall, this is an OK read. It’s probably a book that I would enjoy more on a second reading because I gained an entirely new perspective at the end of the book, but I’m not sure I would read more from this author. I believe her new book revisits some of the characters in The Lace Reader but I’m not really sure that I want to meet them again.
- The Amazon description of this book points out that The Lace Reader has a story that The Thirteenth Tale 'can only dream of'. Believe me, The Thirteenth Tale is a much better read.
