Review: The Lace Reader

Title: The Lace Reader: A Novel
Author: Brunonia Barry
Publisher: Harper (2006)
Pages: 385
Genre: Fiction
Book Source: My Own Copy

Towner Whitney comes back to her home town Salem MA because her aunt has disappeared. Towner had run away years ago from all the heavy issues and secrets in her family and she finds it difficult to return and face it all. Towner comes from a line of women who can read the future in the patterns of lace.

The Lace Reader is told in the first person by Towner, but she is revealed to be an unreliable narrator who's perspectives and memories are tainted by her own mental illness. It is a fairly complex story that is unpredictable. Brunonia Barry unfolds her story piece by piece to reveal the characters and events in a mysterious and sometimes confusing way. Each chapter begins with a little excerpt from "The Lace Reader's Guide" and this sets the tone for that chapter's events.

I thought it was quite intriguing how this book was written from the perspective of someone who has had to endure a lot of tragedy and has been unable to cope with it all. It really gets the reader to think about what it would be like to process through your past when you can not even trust your own mind and memories. There are a lot of issues (such as childhood abuse, death of a loved one, psychological problems etc) that get brought up in this novel and it would not be a good choice if you are looking for a light, fun read. It is easy to loose track and get confused while reading this novel, so you need to just flow with it and not expect to sort it all out as you go. Even at the end I still felt a little unsure if I had gotten it all sorted. Right at the end we discover new information that makes you feel like you need to re-read it to see if it makes sense in light of the final discovery.

Review: Leaving the World

Title: Leaving the World
Author: Douglas Kennedy
Publisher: Atria Paperback (2010)
Genre: Fiction
Book Source: Free copy from publisher

Publisher Description:
On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Jane Howard made a vow to her warring parents: she would never get married, and she would never have children.

But life, as Jane comes to discover, is a profoundly random business. Many years and many lives later, she is a professor in Boston, in love with a brilliant, erratic man named Theo. And then Jane becomes pregnant. Motherhood turns out to be a great welcome surprise—but when a devastating turn of events tears her existence apart she has no choice but to flee all she knows and leave the world.

Just when she has renounced life itself, the disappearance of a young girl pulls her back from the edge and into an obsessive search for some sort of personal redemption. Convinced that she knows more about the case than the police do, she is forced to make a decision—stay hidden or bring to light a shattering truth.

Leaving the World is a riveting portrait of a brilliant woman that reflects the way we live now, of the many routes we follow in the course of a single life, and of the arbitrary nature of destiny. A critically acclaimed international bestseller, it is also a compulsive read and one that speaks volumes about the dilemmas we face in trying to navigate our way through all that fate throws in our path.

My Thoughts:
Leaving the World was an entertaining book that kept me interested throughout. There was certainly a lot going on plot wise. (A little too much to be easily believable actually.) It is told in the first person and the narration flows well. Jane, the protagonist, is a character who is easy to warm to because of her flaws and complications. There are a lot of quirky supporting characters that help to add interest also. The book is divided into sections that correspond to major changes in Jane's life. Some segments seemed to work better than others. I didn't really enjoy the later part where Jane gets caught up in the case of a missing teenage girl. It just didn't seem to fit into the way I would expect Jane to behave.

Douglas Kennedy began Leaving the World with Jane's thirteen year old self vowing to remain single and childless. He then explored how this influenced her subsequent decisions. I thought he did well at portraying Jane as a hurt child who spends much of her adult life trying to protect herself and also gain the love she craves -to basically replace what was missing from her childhood. While it is not some work of great literature, overall Leaving the World was engaging and enjoyable to read. It was quite tragic at times and had some interesting suggestions about the outcomes of ones life choices.