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juushikaTitle: The Lace Reader
Author: Brunonia Barry
Published: Marblehead: Flap Jacket Press, 2007
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 353
Total Page Count: 61,252
Text Number: 176
Read For: recommended by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sisterite, checked out from the library
Short review: 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 narrative voice. However, a weak plot, constant head-hopping, and an unbelievable twist ending drag the book down to mere mediocrity. I expected better from this novel, and I don't recommend it.
The plot (which is quite difficult to summarize) didn't intrigue me when a friend recommended this book, but the atmosphere did. The book is chock full of family secrets and twisted genealogies, prophetic powers, and past trauma, and Barry writes it all in a haunting, lyrical voice. It's a shadowed story, rich with memory and detail, introverted and intensely personal. The Salem setting is integral to the story and adds realistic dimension; the characters are vivid (almost too vivid—their bright coloring is out of place in the dim hues of the rest of the book) and unrelenting forces in Towner's life. The protagonists—Towner, and a policeman investigating Eva's disappearance—provide different points of view and also conflicting information which casts the story in a shadow of doubt, leaving the reader to second guess the narratives and the facts.
The Lace Reader has all the potential to be an atmospheric, absorbing read—but it's not. The book is hampered by its execution. The plot moves slowly and stalls often, and it's hard to follow or care about a story where nothing is going on. The book has multiple narrators, but Barry doesn't move smoothly between them: instead, she switches erratically from first to third person, inserting journals and police reports as well as odd moments of omniscient narration, and these head-hops and narrative changes fragment the flow of the book and make it difficult to follow. Finally, the book has a twist ending—an ending that could be foreshadowed via the conflicting narrators, but is instead left unpredicted and unbelievable.
I expected better from this book—it has so much going for it, and I truly loved the atmosphere and the premise. With so much potential, it's disappointing to see the execution fall flat. The book feels unfinished: it wants editing to streamline and flesh out the plot, and intentional foreshadowing to integrate the twist ending. As it is, I just couldn't enjoy The Lace Reader and I don't recommend it. The potential is there, but it's undeveloped; the novel that remains is disappointing.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Yay! I'm back up to date on book reviews. (It helps when I'm returning books unfinished (Alice in Sunderland) or rereading previously reviewed books (Neverwhere), but still.
Author: Brunonia Barry
Published: Marblehead: Flap Jacket Press, 2007
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 353
Total Page Count: 61,252
Text Number: 176
Read For: recommended by
sisterite, checked out from the libraryShort review: 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 narrative voice. However, a weak plot, constant head-hopping, and an unbelievable twist ending drag the book down to mere mediocrity. I expected better from this novel, and I don't recommend it.
The plot (which is quite difficult to summarize) didn't intrigue me when a friend recommended this book, but the atmosphere did. The book is chock full of family secrets and twisted genealogies, prophetic powers, and past trauma, and Barry writes it all in a haunting, lyrical voice. It's a shadowed story, rich with memory and detail, introverted and intensely personal. The Salem setting is integral to the story and adds realistic dimension; the characters are vivid (almost too vivid—their bright coloring is out of place in the dim hues of the rest of the book) and unrelenting forces in Towner's life. The protagonists—Towner, and a policeman investigating Eva's disappearance—provide different points of view and also conflicting information which casts the story in a shadow of doubt, leaving the reader to second guess the narratives and the facts.
The Lace Reader has all the potential to be an atmospheric, absorbing read—but it's not. The book is hampered by its execution. The plot moves slowly and stalls often, and it's hard to follow or care about a story where nothing is going on. The book has multiple narrators, but Barry doesn't move smoothly between them: instead, she switches erratically from first to third person, inserting journals and police reports as well as odd moments of omniscient narration, and these head-hops and narrative changes fragment the flow of the book and make it difficult to follow. Finally, the book has a twist ending—an ending that could be foreshadowed via the conflicting narrators, but is instead left unpredicted and unbelievable.
I expected better from this book—it has so much going for it, and I truly loved the atmosphere and the premise. With so much potential, it's disappointing to see the execution fall flat. The book feels unfinished: it wants editing to streamline and flesh out the plot, and intentional foreshadowing to integrate the twist ending. As it is, I just couldn't enjoy The Lace Reader and I don't recommend it. The potential is there, but it's undeveloped; the novel that remains is disappointing.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Yay! I'm back up to date on book reviews. (It helps when I'm returning books unfinished (Alice in Sunderland) or rereading previously reviewed books (Neverwhere), but still.
