“The Lace Reader” was originally self-published. Once word got out – the publishing houses picked it up. Justifiable hubris indeed! I read the entire book in two days … Mom- what’s for dinner? Nothing kids – I’m reading … (sort of kidding).
The minute I finished the last bit and realized what had had really been going on, I wanted to start again.
Three generations of Whitney women live in the town of Salem, Mass. A beautiful town with a history of burning intelligent, difficult women at the stake; it seems a perfect fit that these three should live here. The Whitney women have,” taken quirky to a new level of achievement.” They fight against their internal demons as much as the awful and wonderful people in their lives.A proverbial witch-hunt on all levels.We find ourselves in a mysterious realm where we do not know exactly what has happened to Eva, the matriarch of the family. When she disappears, we’ll need to know why and how.
The people with the answers are having struggles with the situational realities of their own lives and the difficulties of their familial interactions. The matriarch, Eva, may or may not have died. The youngest Whitney, Towner, drags herself home post-surgery from California for the possible funeral. May, in the middle, is a famous local recluse.You are never entirely sure from whose point of view the truth comes. Towner freely admits all accounts are suspect,” never believe me. I lie all the time.” Who should we believe? Towner, who suffers the horrible loss of her twin? Her potential lover, the new town cop? May, who never leaves her golden retriever-infested island ? Cal, the dreadful, hypocritical preacher?
To add to this hotbed of turmoil is mystical confusion – all three women are psychic. (Not all thrilled about it.) They intuit some occurrences by reading pieces of Ipswich Lace and we wade right in with them. We need to take everything with a grain of salt and it is mesmerizing trying to decipher the internal/external dialogue that will hopefully explain what has happened.
I love finding a literary world that you’d like to be a part of… The last was my eldest daughter’s copy of “The Penderwick’s” (by Jeanne Birdsall) in which you could smell summer freedom and thick green canopies of leaves on every page.”The Lace Reader” is the same.You can taste the North Shore’s salty breeze and smell low tide. You can hear the stampede of golden retrievers romping on May’s island. When Rafferty takes Towner to dinner at a floating restaurant,(which is really there by the way), you would give anything to be sitting on the gunwale with her.With all of them – aside from Cal, who I would be unable to restrain myself from pulverizing and I’m sure you’ll agree – Mrs Barry depicts elaborately prosaic characters in very poetic terms. A constant proliferation of insight makes them people to befriend.
In addition to feeling close to the Whitneys, you’ll find Barry’s story-line is superb. So clever. Towner, May, Eva and most all of the peripheral characters are so believable and exceptional that the anticipatory feeling of solution is tangible. You look around every corner with them.You’ll re-read bits to make sure you are where you think you are. It’s quite something to stride through this tangled web that is a mastery of skilled writing. Eventually the web becomes a distinctly focused patch of intricately-threaded lace. Stepping back, we are thunderstruck suddenly to see clearly … and even Towner realizes that,” the spell is broken … [we are] free.”