I received this novel from www.BookClubGirl.com but had a conflict with work during the online chat so I just got around to reading it. It was a very unusual book and I enjoyed it.
The story follows a family who lives in Salem, MA. Against a backdrop of tourist buses and daily re-enacted witch hunts, the Whitneys read lace - that is, they can see the future in the patterns of woven lace held up to a person's face. Throughout the book, the reader discovers layers of recent family history and how things are not always as they seem for the Whitneys. Uniquely, the middle third of the book is a 'short' story written by one of the characters (Towner) and based on her life, which adds to the mystique and storytelling within the book. If Towner does not already seem to be an unreliable narrator in the first section of the book, her fictionalized account of her life firmly sets her there in the second.
What I also liked about this book was that it was an old-fashioned story set it modern times. There is an element of life in Salem and in the fictional island off the coast that is timeless - people's homes are accessible only based on the tide schedule, there is a strong presence of folklore and magic and a notable absence of Twitter and Facebook. It was hard to remember that this story was taking place in the current time and not it the 1700's. Certainly that is a function of the presence of history in Salem but also of the story Barry chose to tell.
It is nice to find an author doing something unique.
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