The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

I was in melancholy mood; as in sober thoughtfulness; pensiveness and not a gloomy state of mind, esp. when habitual or prolonged, depression; (am I explaining myself here?-P) (quoted from: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/melancholy) when I stumbled upon this book entitled “The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry”.

I’ve watched one movie previously (forgotten the title though.. a dotong mah.. :-P) about a group of assassins who assassinate based on pattern derived from an old cloth making machine, so I thought to myself perhaps “The Lace Reader” will revolve around the same premise :-P

Boy I was so wrong. Don’t get me wrong, this book is a really good read. The book is engaging; the plot and character development/explanation is so good that you’ll end up “creating” mould out of the plots/characters in your head as you read on.

However, towards the end of the book, all the plots and characters you’ve built in your mind came crashing down leaving only doubt whether the ending matches the beginning or vice versa. To put it in perspective, reading this book is exactly like watching the movie “Shutter Island” acted by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Essentially, it is a book about generations of women endowed with special skill of lace and/or mind reading in Salem (infamous for the Witch Hunt Incident). The protagonist of this novel is a lady called Towner Whitney (real name Sophya) who can “decipher” the past, present and future from the lace pattern, particularly the handmade Ipswich lace.

Towner escaped from Salem years ago when she had mental breakdown after her twin sister’s suicide, only to go back to the hood when her beloved great-aunt Eva disappeared. Flashbacks, memories and urge to discover reasons of her twin sister’s suicide brought along confusing blend of fact and make believe into picture.

In fact, all the characters introduced into the plot revolve along Towner’s life; two characters worth mentioning are:

1) Her mother, May, who appears to be her mom in the beginning only to negate all that in the end. Meaning that she’s not her mom after all. GASP!
2) Her twin sister, Lyndley, who lived separately from Towner since young only to be reunited and killed herself when she stumbled upon Towner in a boat together with her crush, Jack LaLibertie. However, at the end of the novel, even this fact is not true, because apparently Lyndley is a twin Towner never had because she died immediately after birth

See, I told you this book has quirky ending. In fact, it is so quirky that I had to re-read the ending part twice just to make sure that I read the right thing. Well, I bet everyone will do the same if they read this book.

This is a neutral book review because it is complicated to begin with and my hats off to Brunonia for writing such a compelling book with such a refreshing albeit twisted ending :-P

I do agree with The Washington Post’s quote, “Gripping… a marvelously bizarre cast of characters (living and dead) in a uniquely colorful town”.

Personal rating: 7 out of 10

Cons:
1) A complicated read. I had to slow down in order to grasp the flow of the story

Pros:
1) A novel with real good twist at the end