The Lace Reader

'Lace' a finely textured novel - and a rare story of self-publishing success

By Traci J. Macnamara, Special to the Rocky

Published August 7, 2008 at 7 p.m.

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Taking a path that's not for the timid, Brunonia Barry self-published a novel. In most cases, a move like that would involve untold hours looking for ways to distribute the book and frustrating attempts at marketing it to a world that looks on such projects with skepticism.

Even then, the moment would inevitably arrive when the author would realize it's all been for naught - that despite all that work, only a handful of people even know the book exists.

For Barry, though, the story took the most amazing turn: Her efforts actually began to pay off.

People picked up the novel and began talking about it. A few teachers loved it and assigned it to their classes. Books began to move.

And soon, according to news items that set the Internet abuzz, The Lace Reader landed in the hands of Laurie Chittenden, executive editor at William Morrow. Chittenden admired the book, and eventually Morrow slapped down more than $2 million for world English rights in a two- book deal.

Such scenarios are about as likely as winning the lottery, and it goes without saying that Barry must be ecstatic at the unexpected turn of events. But now the novel is out and the moment of truth has arrived: Does The Lace Reader live up to its hype?

The answer is a yes - if a qualified one. The plot crackles with suspense, though some of the book's narrative elements can be off-putting.

The Lace Reader hooks readers from the opening lines, when the intriguing main character tells readers: "My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time. I am a crazy woman. . . . That last part is true."

With a narrator who admits to being crazy and a liar on the opening page, the challenge from the get- go is to determine what exactly is true, and Barry skillfully withholds that revelation until the book's final pages. In the meantime, Barry maintains tension for nearly 400 pages by telling the story of a family whose women have been given the ability to read the future in a piece of lace.

To the Whitney women, making lace is more than a family business. They see lace "in every living thing: the bare branches of winter, the patterns of clouds, the surface of water as it ripples in the breeze." As lace readers, they sometimes see more than they can bear: talking dead people or horrible accidents before they occur.

Towner's Great Aunt Eva was one of Salem's original lace readers and author of a lace reader's manual that instructs others how to stare into a piece of lace so that "there will appear a glimpse of something not quite seen." If done successfully, "an image will begin to form . . . in the space between what is real and what is only imagined."

The technique of reading lace requires a blurring of the line between reality and imagination. Such fuzziness becomes a characteristic of the story, and some readers may find themselves groping uncomfortably through an unreliable narrator's wild imaginings.

Moments of confusion aside, though, the story's rewards outweigh any effort in sifting out the truth.

The plot centers on Towner Whitney, a woman in her 30s who has vowed never to use her gift. Towner has also resolved never to return to Salem after a series of tragedies in her youth left her on the verge of psychosis. But when Aunt Eva goes missing after one of her daily swims in the harbor and then turns up dead, Towner makes the trip to Salem and finds herself submerged in the puzzle of her past.

Shortly after Towner arrives back in Salem, a young woman named Angela Rickey also disappears, adding more drama to the mysterious circumstances surrounding her aunt's death.

Cal Boynton, a born-again preacher with links to the Whitney women, becomes suspect early on. As the story unfolds, the depth of his responsibility for the fracturing of this family becomes clear.

Salem proves to be a fertile ground for historical parallels, and The Lace Reader draws on the town's rich past to create believable tensions among its characters, which include self-professed witches and members of a fundamentalist religious sect.

Yellow Dog Island, a stone's throw from Salem's shore, also plays an important role in the book's geography. Two of the Whitney women live on the island in the relative seclusion that its craggy shoreline creates. It's where Towner's blind Aunt Emma lives and where her estranged mother, May, harbors abused women.

By alternating the setting between the remote Yellow Dog Island to the more-familiar Salem, Barry doesn't simply create places; she constructs worlds, and her sensitivity to the details of place adds an extra layer of depth to the story. Something as innocuous as fog, for example, has its own personality: "Fog doesn't roll in here," begins one chapter, "It drops in patches - not like a blanket, like a feather pillow. It can smother."

Such finely rendered moments make this a novel to savor - a story as textured as it is imaginative. It's no wonder that, from its humble beginnings as a self- published story, the novel has attracted attention worldwide (rights to the little-novel-that-could have been sold in 21 countries).

In short, Barry's bold gambit has paid off with a story that readers will find as lovely as a swatch of handmade lace.

Traci J. Macnamara is a freelance writer living in Vail.

About Barry

Barry is a scriptwriter as well as founder, with her husband, of a successful game and puzzle software company called SmartGames. According to news reports, she and her husband spent more than $50,000 self-publishing The Lace Reader.

The Lace Reader

By Brunonia Barry. William Morrow, 394 pages, $24.95

* Grade: A-

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