"The Lace Reader": Tale of witches casts its spell then loses some magic

"The Lace Reader"

by Brunonia Barry

Morrow, 390 pp., $24.95

BOOK REVIEW |

Brunonia Barry's debut novel describes a community where women share many tasks. Among them: making lace, milking cows, growing flax, spinning yarn from yellow dog hair and protecting one another from abusive men.

There is also a sisterly job that Barry herself has undertaken. Women write books that other women will want to sit around and discuss, preferably over tea and cucumber sandwiches. And for those who seize upon "The Lace Reader" as book-club material, don't forget the doilies. They're very much part of the scene here.

So is the witch-hunting locale that is Salem, Mass., a place that long ago enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame. Thanks to Barry, who lives in Salem and knows the place inside out, the touristy attributes of "The Lace Reader" are about to bring Salem new attention.

She captures this setting evocatively and often wittily, as when a charge of modern-day witchcraft is filed against one controversial citizen. "I don't even understand why we're taking this report," Salem's police chief says. "Witchcraft isn't even a crime. In this town it's a profit center."

So "The Lace Reader" unfolds against a backdrop where entrepreneurial witches set up a booth for selling Celtic jewelry to tourists. The town's most sporting avowed witch, a direct descendant of a married couple executed in 1692, seems to be acting out a one-woman family protest ("an 'I have the name, so I might as well have the game' type of thing"). And while the town still has militant Calvinists, they are now followers of a cult leader named Cal Boynton. A capital letter A is always sewn onto Cal's clothing. But it's on his Armani labels, not on his chest.

In the midst of this admirably mischievous depiction of Salem, Barry introduces her mentally unstable heroine. Her last name is Whitney, and her first is either Towner or Sophya (the latter misspelled, but borrowed from Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife). Towner admits in the first paragraph of her story that she can be something of a liar. So the reader is left to guess what her great big secret whopper happens to be.

Here are some things Towner says about herself: That she was brought up in a blue-blooded but highly confusing family. That her biological mother, May, had twins but gave up one of them, possibly because she had a spare. That Towner's great-aunt Eva is the place's most eccentric citizen, which is Salem's equivalent of an Olympic gold medal. And that Eva could see the future by reading the Ipswich lace that is painstakingly handmade in this region. Eva, perhaps while imprisoned in a fortune-cookie factory, has written a text called "The Lace Reader's Guide," and lines from it are cited at the start of each chapter. Sample saying: "Every Reader of lace must learn to exist within the empty spaces that form the question."

Despite its title, "The Lace Reader" does not feature much actual lace reading. But it does convey the particulars of making lace with bobbins made of bone, navigating the islands near Salem with a fisherman's ease and, last but hardly least, recuperating from a mental breakdown. Towner has, for reasons that Barry will keep up her sleeve, undergone a long hospitalization and electroshock therapy. Her memory has been left highly unreliable, and she exhibits the symptoms of dissociative disorder.

What's real in "The Lace Reader"? What is not? To her credit Barry makes this story blithe and creepy in equal measure. (The background strains of "Some Enchanted Evening" in a story rooted in witchcraft is one nicely double-edged stroke.) And she keeps it unpredictable, partly by switching narrative points of view.

Sometimes the book is narrated by Towner in the present tense. Sometimes it shifts to third-person narration describing Rafferty, Salem's charming cop. Rafferty explains why he used to frequent the tea room run by Great-Aunt Eva by saying, "I'm a big fan of the fancy sandwich."

The moment would be breezier had Aunt Eva not just drowned during her daily swim. But Eva is still talking to Towner, watery grave notwithstanding.

For as long as Barry can keep her book rambling this freely, it makes an intriguingly peculiar story. And there is much suspense invested in where all the lacunas in Towner's impressions will lead her. Then two unfortunate things happen: The narrative gives way to a long, long piece of so-called creative writing that Towner composed during the time she was hospitalized. But this manuscript sounds just like the rest of the novel. And the events it describes are overwrought enough to break this book's otherwise gentle spell.

Then, when it finally becomes clear how directly Barry wants to link Salem's past to her present-day story, "The Lace Reader" heaves all remnants of subtlety overboard. The beguiling effects of the first part of this book are betrayed by its finale.

To her credit, Barry does set up this ending carefully. Few of her story's throwaway details turn out to be incidental. There are clues planted everywhere, and eventually she pieces them together to melodramatic effect. What's more, she has described herself in interviews as influenced by Joseph Campbell's myth of the hero. But this is more of a talking point for talk shows than a reflection of what she has put on the page.

Perhaps there is mythic progress as the book moves from etiquette lessons (Towner was taught to eat vitamins with a dessert fork) to all hell's breaking loose (someone in the book is said to have been torn apart by dogs). Perhaps the author is just intent on churning up a big ending. After all, Towner has read not only lace; she's also read movie scripts for a Hollywood director. When she speaks of fleeing Salem and going as far away as she can, California is what she has in mind.