8. The Lace Reader

The Lace Reader. Brunonia Barry. 2006.

This is an intense novel.  I am reminded of the book challenge I did a few years ago where one of the categories is a book with an unreliable narrator.  This is the perfect book for that, way better than whatever it was that I read for it.  

The women characters in this novel are all strong and flawed, the way all survivors of intimate violence are in the real world and we don't really see it until the well into the book, too, which I love.  It is a complicated narrative of survivors helping survivors (and victims) and how they bring their own history to this endeavor.  Their own unresolved wounds end up hurting themselves, even while they reach out to help others even under the hardest of conditions.  This is different then the men. Although there are only a male characters, they are mostly flawed in the way that hurts the women in their lives.  But I loved how these big histories were not the story at all, but rather the backdrop to a well written tale of fortune telling, witches, and the bond between women.
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I'm recommending it, but with a serious content warning. I don't usually do that, even for books about abuse. There is nothing graphic in this book at all, but the chilling revelations are enough that I would expect most people to find the ending deeply disturbing.
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Recommended by Annaliese: The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry, on Audible. Or I have the hardcover, if you ever want to borrow it!

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