New York Times Review of The Lace Reader

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The New York Times posted a review of Brunonia Barry’s novel, The Lace Reader.  I thought the review was very fair and quite accurate, particularly about Towner’s creative writing stopping the forward motion of the plot, which was something I couldn’t articulate when I wrote my own review.  Still, I think the book is well worth a read.  Check it out!

When I have an opportunity, I’ll post my review of Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue, which I finished reading last night.  I am embarking on a re-read of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows before I turn back to new literature.

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The Lace Reader

Posted on by Dana
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Brunonia Barry’s novel The Lace Reader is an intricate and fascinating read.  Barry’s description evokes a setting that is easy for the reader to picture and her characters are memorable.  Towner Whitney narrates most of the novel, and readers would do well to pay particular to the first two sentences in which she introduces herself.  I make a habit of checking a book to see how many chapters, parts, and pages it has, and I inadvertently saw something on a page near the end that gave away the ending, but I enjoyed seeing it unravel nonetheless.  Do yourself a favor if you read it, and don’t peek.  The surprise is better.

Towner returns to Salem after 15 years when she discovers Eva, whom Towner refers to as her aunt, is missing.  As the novel progresses, the reader learns that Towner has stayed away to escape some horrible memories from her past, when her twin Lyndley committed suicide at the age of 17 and Towner herself confessed to a murder that had not taken place.  She meets and becomes close to Rafferty, the detective assigned to look into Eva’s death and also into subsequent events.

My favorite character was Ann Chase, whom Barry describes as the second most famous witch in Salem after Laurie Cabot.  She was no-nonsense, funny, and strong.  I also liked Eva, who has died by the time the narrative begins, but whose personality is revealed through other characters’ memories of her.

The title comes from a fictional means of divination called lace reading, which is practiced by Eva, May, and occasionally Towner, though Towner blames her sister’s death on lace reading and refuses to practice it afterward.

More than anything else, this novel is about abuse and its toll on the human psyche.  I found the book to be really interesting, and it wouldn’t surprise me if lace reading becomes a popular means of fortune telling as a result of the novel.  Barry says that she wrote the novel as a “heroine’s journey,” influenced by the ideas of Joseph Campbell.  She wondered how the woman’s journey as a hero would be different from that of the man.  I’m not sure, after reading it, that I see Joseph Campbell’s monomyth in the novel.  However, I do see a sort of journey in it, and I’m glad I went on that trip.

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Reading Stats

Posted on by Dana
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Now that we’re closing in on the middle of July, lots of book bloggers are reviewing their 2008 statistics, and I didn’t want to be left out of the fun [via Bookgirl].

  • Books read: 14 (which makes me feel woefully inadequate next to Bookgirl’s 48)
  • Mysteries: 1
  • Fiction: 12
  • Books by women: 8
  • Library copies: 1
  • Books I have, will, or might teach this year: 4
  • Books I didn’t like: 1
  • YA books: 2
  • Classics: 5
  • Online (DailyLit): 1
  • New-to-me authors: 9
  • Books published this year: 2
  • Average Goodreads rating (out of 5 stars): 4.21

I am a little surprised about the high rating.  My overall Goodreads rating is 4.36.  I think that’s because I rarely finish I book I don’t like, and I don’t review or rate books I don’t finish.  Therefore, all of the books I’ve read this year (with one exception) received 4 or 5 stars.

What are some of your reading stats for this year?

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The Plague of Doves

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The Plague of DovesLouise Erdrich’s latest novel A Plague of Doves might be the best book I’ve read this year.  I kept turning the pages as the drama that affected an entire town unravels showing the degree to which the traumatic murder of a family and subsequent lynching of innocent parties binds the townspeople together in a fascinating web of history.

A Plague of Doves is often compared to Faulkner.  Erdrich’s use of multiple narrators as well as the imagery, symbolism, and characters of her novel certainly evoke Faulkner, but readers daunted by Faulkner’s style need not be afraid.  A Plague of Doves contains no page-length sentences or stream-of-consciousness meanderings that make it difficult to follow.  This story is told from the viewpoint of four different narrators who are all connected to the town’s tragic past in various ways.  One of the narrators, Evelina Harp, attempts to parse the connections upon first hearing about the story of the lynching:

The story Mooshum told us had its repercussions — the first being that I could not look at anyone in quite the same way anymore.  I became obsessed with lineage.  As I came to the end of my small leopard-print diary (its key useless as my brother had broken the clasp), I wrote down as much of Mooshum’s story as I could remember, and then the relatives of everyone I knew — parents, grandparents, way on back in time.  I traced the blood history of the murders through my classmates and friends until I could draw out elaborate spider webs of lines and intersecting circles.  I drew in pencil.  There were a few people, one of them being Corwin Peace, whose chart was so complicated that I erased parts of it until I wore right through the paper. (86)

I drew my own family tree chart in the back of my book and added to it as I read and discovered new connections.  After finishing the book, I wish I had thought to make index note cards, as one reviewer did, because the web of relations is so complicated.  For all its complexity the story is that much richer and more real.

Several sections of Erdrich’s novel could stand alone as short stories, and indeed, parts of it have been published as short fiction, as I learned on reading Erdrich’s acknowledgments at the end of the book.  If parts of the novel feel somewhat digressive as a result, I think Erdrich can be forgiven, for when the reader reaches the last few pages, all the digressions are shown to be pieces of a complex puzzle — the reader doesn’t know what the picture is until the last piece is put in place.

In addition to being a fairly good murder mystery, the novel is rich in imagery, symbolism, and well-drawn characters, and by the end of the novel, I felt like a resident of Pluto, North Dakota and felt sure that I had truly known all of these people and uncovered their bloody history myself.   And that, after all, is what a good book should do for us.  Go right out and get this book now!  It’s amazing!  I don’t often post Amazon reviews, but I loved this book so much I want everyone to read it, so this review will be cross-posted at Amazon.

My next book is Brunonia Barry’s The Lace Reader.

Update, 9/12/09: I managed to make my tree look sort of readable using Inspiration. Download it by clicking this link. I hope it’s useful. It probably goes without saying that unless you’ve read the book, you shouldn’t look at it because it reveals the ending.

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The Lace Reader Received

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I received an advance reading copy of Brunonia Bryant’s The Lace Reader.  I’m looking forward to being one of the first bloggers to be able to review this novel, so I will begin it as soon as I finish The Plague of Doves (which is really, really good so far).

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My Next Read and Clarification on DailyLit

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I have decided (since I received my Amazon package) to read Louise Erdrich’s A Plague of Doves. If you would like to learn more about this book, listen to this interview with Valerie Jackson on Between the Lines:

Between the Lines: Louise Erdrich

Because I received such a nice e-mail from a representative of DailyLit about my concerns regarding Emma, I feel the need to clarify a couple of things. I have been and remain a huge fan of DailyLit. I think it has enabled me to read some books I otherwise might not have read. I complained that Emma was broken up in some odd places, and DailyLit’s representative assured me they are taking steps to fix problems like this. I don’t want to discourage anyone from using the service, and I would be grieved if anything I said in my review of Emma influenced anyone not to try it.

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Northanger Abbey

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Northanger AbbeyJane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is the story of the naive Catherine Morland. Catherine accompanies Mr. and Mrs. Allen, family friends, to Bath and meets and befriends Isabella Thorpe, the daughter of one of Mrs. Allen’s school friends. Catherine also meets Henry Tilney and is instantly smitten. Catherine also befriends Tilney’s sister Eleanor and secures an invitation to visit the Tilneys’ home Northanger Abbey from General Tilney, Henry and Eleanor’s father.

Every synopsis of Northanger Abbey that I’ve read has been misleading. Even the title is misleading. I was misled into believing the entirety, or at least a large portion of the book would take place at the imposing Northanger Abbey, ancestral home of the Tilneys. I judge about half the book is actually set at Northanger Abbey. Also, most synopses of the book that I’ve read reference Catherine Morland’s romantic imagination convincing her that a strange gothic history has taken place at Northanger Abbey, but that episode occupies only a small part of the plot of the novel — a few chapters at best.

I don’t think this novel is so much a parody or satire of gothic novels as it is the story of how a young girl loses her naiveté. It was a quick, enjoyable read, and I liked it better than Emma, though I don’t think it quite tops Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility. Catherine was a likable character, and I enjoyed the dialogue in the novel (as always in Austen’s writing).

I read Northanger Abbey as part of the Historical Fiction Challenge. At this point, my progress in the challenge stands thusly:

I don’t think I’ll pick up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell again next, but I’m not sure what I will read, as I expecting a bunch of books in the mail and would like to choose from among them; which one I choose depends on which arrives first. I’ll update once I have the books in hand and have made a decision.

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Emma

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This morning, DailyLit sent me my final 191st installment of Jane Austen’s Emma, which I read just a few moments ago. Upon finishing the book, I have to say that while I love DailyLit and the idea behind it, daily subscriptions were perhaps not the best way to read this particular novel (and perhaps Jane Austen in general — I am not sure). Austen has a subtlety and requires, I think, a great deal of concentration from her reader. Reading this novel over the course of about six months made it hard for me to remember some of the events. Of course, I could have had installments sent more quickly by requesting them (by default, the subscriptions will not be sent any more frequently than once a day). A second problem I had in receiving the book this way is that it was very poorly transcribed. On several occasions, my transcription cut off in the middle of someone’s speech or would even end as someone was about to say something (even cutting off at a comma instead of a period). I found this maddening and most of the time either requested the next installment or had to go back and re-read the end of the previous one. Another fault in the transcription were grammar errors — the possessive “hers” was rendered “her’s” on several occasions in the text.

As for the story, I have previously read Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and am currently reading Northanger Abbey (I have also attempted Persuasion twice). Of the novels with which I am familiar, I have to say Emma contains my least favorite storyline and characters. I never really managed to quite like Emma. She seemed to me to be quite shallow and snobby. I did like Mr. Knightley, but I fail to see what he saw in Emma. Mrs. Elton was hilarious, as Austen’s most annoying characters typically are. Still, even though I didn’t enjoy the novel as much as I typically enjoy Austen, it was an entertaining read. I had seen Clueless, and it was interesting to see how closely Amy Heckerling followed her source material.

Not one soul commented to tell me which Dickens novel I should read of the three: Great Expectations, David Copperfield, or A Tale of Two Cities. Therefore, I used the only means of divination I could think of and asked my seven-year-old daughter Maggie, who has no investment in my choice except that perhaps the title of the third sounds like a Garfield movie. And of course that’s the one she chose for me.

Meanwhile, I have discovered yet another use for my Goodreads account in addition to keeping a record of all the books I have read and am currently reading. Up until the last couple of days, my “to-read” bookshelf has held only the couple of books that were on my immediate list of books I wanted to read. I have begun cataloging the books I find interesting so I won’t forget about them later, and I am finding that to be really helpful for me. My mother has for years kept a notebook with a list of books she find interesting and checks them off as she acquires them, so consider my Goodreads account my notebook.

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Brunonia Barry’s The Lace Reader

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I heard about Brunonia Barry’s novel The Lace Reader yesterday via Book Club Girl’s blog.  Book Club Girl has an interview with Barry that really intrigued me, and you ought to give it a listen if my description of the novel intrigues you.  I was lucky to be one of the first ten commenters, which means Book Club Girl will be sending me a free advance reader edition of The Lace Reader.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of the novel is how it came to be published.  Trying to get a book published is hard, trying, and often disheartening work.  Rather than spend years trying to find a publisher, Barry published her book herself.  The book became popular with readers and book clubs, and it attracted the attention of publishers who then had to bid for her book.  I love that part of the story.  Barry was able to score a $2 million book deal; the novel will be published by William Morrow and has already generated film industry buzz.

The novel is the story of Towner Whitney, a native of Salem, MA who can read the future in patterns of Ipswich lace.  She returns to her hometown after the murder of two women.  Barry says that her inspiration for the story was Joseph Campbell’s theory of the monomyth, around which I built a senior English elective at my school.  Needless to say, a new book deliberately written with the Hero’s Journey in mind intrigued me.  Barry explains that “Most stories that follow this pattern have a decidedly male orientation: a lone individual acts heroically and saves the day. I wondered if there might be an alternate form, a feminine Hero’s Journey.”  Barry is right.  Of the books I chose, all of them had a male protagonist, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to find a book that had a female protagonist — I couldn’t.  I chose books like The Iliad, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Le Morte D’Arthur, The Ramayana, The Hobbit, Star Wars, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which was nixed by my principal), among a few other selected texts.  In part I am intrigued by this book for possible inclusion in my course.

I am about one-quarter into Northanger Abbey, and it’s been a delight.  I love the “heroine” Catherine, and I am looking forward to discovering what the Editrix of Austen Blog loves about Mr. Tilney (I’ve only seen him twice so far).  Austen, as always, has a pitch-perfect ear for conversation, and I was completely charmed by chapter six, in which she recounts a dialogue between Catherine and Isabella Thorpe (whom I also adore).  I should be finishing Emma this weekend, so please look for a review some time on Sunday.  I have decided I will read Charles Dickens next on DailyLit, but I am having trouble choosing a book.  I have narrowed down the list to three selections, and if you have thoughts about which one I should choose, please leave me a comment.

David Copperfield would take me more than a year in 447 daily installments, but A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations are broken into 170 and 231 parts respectively.  When selecting novels for DailyLit, I try to choose books that I think I would otherwise not read, and all three books fit that description, so if you don’t help me, I’m afraid I’ll have to rely on eenie, meenie, miney, and moe for assistance.  Here’s incentive for you: if you successfully convince me to read the book of your choice, I will send you a DailyLit subscription to the book of your choice (so long as it’s free), and you can enjoy a bit of DailyLit in your own inbox.  What do you say?

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