"The Map of True Places" by Brunonia Barry ~ Mesmerizing

Summary : 

Brunonia Barry, the New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader, offers an emotionally compelling novel about finding your true place in the world.

Zee Finch has come a long way from a motherless childhood spent stealing boats—a talent that earned her the nickname Trouble. She's now a respected psychotherapist working with the world-famous Dr. Liz Mattei. She's also about to marry one of Boston's most eligible bachelors. But the suicide of Zee's patient Lilly Braedon throws Zee into emotional chaos and takes her back to places she though she'd left behind.

What starts as a brief visit home to Salem after Lilly's funeral becomes the beginning of a larger journey for Zee. Her father, Finch, long ago diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, has been hiding how sick he really is. His longtime companion, Melville, has moved out, and it now falls to Zee to help her father through this difficult time. Their relationship, marked by half-truths and the untimely death of her mother, is strained and awkward.

Overwhelmed by her new role, and uncertain about her future, Zee destroys the existing map of her life and begins a new journey, one that will take her not only into her future but into her past as well. Like the sailors of old Salem who navigated by looking at the stars, Zee has to learn to find her way through uncharted waters to the place she will ultimately call home.

Particulars of the Book :
Published by:  HarperCollins
AudioBook, ebook and regular books
Author:  Brunonia Barry
Find her:  Brunonia


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Brunonia Barry studied literature and creative writing at Green Mountain college in Vermont and at the University of New Hampshire and was one of the founding members of the Portland Stage Company. While still an undergraduate at UNH, Barry spent a year living in Dublin and auditing Trinity College classes on James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Barry’s love of theater led to a first job in Chicago where she ran promotional campaigns for Second City, Ivanhoe, and Studebaker theaters. After a brief stint in Manhattan, where she studied screenwriting at NYU, Barry relocated to California because she had landed an agent and had an original script optioned. Working on a variety of projects for several studios, she continued to study screenwriting and story structure with Hollywood icon Robert McKee, becoming one of the nine writers in his Development Group.
Brunonia’s love for writing and storytelling has taken her all across the country but after nearly a decade in Hollywood, Barry returned to Massachusetts where, along with her husband, she co-founded an innovative company that creates award-winning word, visual and logic puzzles. In recent years, she has written books for the Beacon Street Girls, a fictional series for ‘tweens. Happily married, Barry lives with her husband and her only child that just happens to be a 12-year-old Golden Retriever named Byzantium. The Lace Reader was her first original novel.
Barry is the first American Writer to win the Woman’s International Fiction Festival’s 2009 Baccante Award (for The Lace Reader.) Her second novel, The Map of True Places will be published 0n May 4, 2010.


Trailer:

THE DAME'S REVIEW :

I listened to this book on AudioBook first on my trip to Louisiana and then at home afterwards because I couldn't bear not to finish it having completed my driving before it was over.  This was a mesmerizing book and the miles just melted away as the story progressed.  The narrator was wonderful on this one, but the story was most perfect.  It ranks as one of the best stories I've listened to on tape of all time.  I loved it.  Made me wish I'd just read the book!

You can see the summary above, and here is a review below by Kirkus.

Kirkus Reviews

A novice psychotherapist finds unsettling parallels between a patient's suicide and her mother's history, in Barry's second (The Lace Reader, 2008). Hepzibah (ZeeZee grew up in the historic Salem home that was once Purveyance's domestic prison.) Now a doctoral candidate in Boston, Zee sees aspects of Maureen in her bipolar patient Lilly, a suburban homemaker. Lilly tells her of Adam, a carpenter, whom she loves desperately, but who now appears to be stalking them both-Zee's seen him lurking outside her office. With adjusted meds, Lilly improves, but then leaps to her death from a bridge during rush hour. At Lilly's funeral, Zee spots a man she recognizes from TV news as a distraught eyewitness to Lilly's death. More personal woes intrude. Finch's Parkinson's disease is worsening, he's now alienated from Melville (his partner since Maureen's death) and requires full-time care. Zee returns to Salem, and this town of Wicca practitioners, pirate re-enactors and tall ships, like Friendship, a replica of the vessel on which Purveyance fled, reclaims her. Hawk, the stricken eyewitness, is now crewing on the Friendship and, when Zee enrolls in his celestial navigation class, she's ineffably drawn to him. Soon the pair are making love in Maureen's room, beneath the same widow's walk on which the storied lovers once trysted. Although marred by unnecessary "come-to-realize" moments, this woman-in-jeopardy thriller retooled with gothic elements-shifting identities, secrets and portents, a deserted cottage and a missing suicide note-manages to transcend its component cliches. A highly readable sophomore effort. Reading group guide available online.



I loved the depth of character study Ms Barry goes into with Zee and her parents.  Maureen is especially compelling to me for some reason...perhaps because she's such a tragic figure and because her love of fairytales and the ghostly appeals to the gothic in me.  Zee keeps the story alive as she searches for herself and the meaning of her roots.  And I love the relationship between her father and his gay lover,  "Hawthore" and "Melville" are just brilliant.  Melville's story is especially poignant.  Zee's dad (Hawthorne's) gift of Yeats book of poems is a section of the story that will tear your heart out.

This is a book on tape that will keep you happily engaged for several days, and I'm sure the same could be said for the book.  I love Brunonia Barry's style and her setting of Salem, MA.  Made me very homesick for Massachusetts.

5 stars             Deborah/TheBookishDame

"The Taker" by Alma Katsu ~ Irresistible!

Alma Katsu's "The Taker," #1 in her Taker Trilogy, is a thoroughly irresistible book.  It takes you by surprise when you think you know it all and have read it all.  It captures your imagination when you think you know what's coming on the next page, and it turns your mind around when you think you've figured it all out in the end!  This is a novel that has everything and more than you could expect from a gothic.  You haven't experienced everything from New England's dark past...Maine and Boston still hold mysteries that are incomprehensible.  You may want to pick up "The Taker" before you read Ms Katsu's newest book in her series, "The Reckoning!"

Summary :

True love can last an eternity . . . but immortality comes at a price. . . .

On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae—Lanny—walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her . . . despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort. And as she begins to tell her story, a story of enduring love and consummate betrayal that transcends time and mortality, Luke finds himself utterly captivated.

Her impassioned account begins at the turn of the nineteenth century in the same small town of St. Andrew, Maine, back when it was a Puritan settlement. Consumed as a child by her love for the son of the town’s founder, Lanny will do anything to be with him forever. But the price she pays is steep—an immortal bond that chains her to a terrible fate for all eternity. And now, two centuries later, the key to her healing and her salvation lies with Dr. Luke Findley.

Part historical novel, part supernatural page-turner, The Taker is an unforgettable tale about the power of unrequited love not only to elevate and sustain, but also to blind and ultimately destroy, and how each of us is responsible for finding our own path to redemption.

Particulars of the Book :
Publisher:  Gallery Books/Simon and Schuster
Pages:  436  (Original hardback edition)
Genre:  Paranormal Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Gothic Novel
Author:  Alma Katsu Website:  http://almakatsu.com
Purchase the book here:  Barnes and Noble

About Alma Katsu :

Alma Katsu lives outside of Washington, DC with her husband, musician Bruce Katsu. Her debut, The Taker, a Gothic novel of suspense, has been compared to the early work of Anne Rice and Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. The novel was named a Top Ten Debut Novel of 2011 by the American Library Association and has developed an international following. The Reckoning, the second book in the trilogy, was published in June 2012. The Taker Trilogy is published by Gallery Books/Simon and Schuster.
Ms. Katsu is a graduate of the Master's writing program at the Johns Hopkins University and received her bachelor's degree from Brandeis University, where she studied with John Irving. She also attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.
Prior to publication of her first novel, Ms. Katsu had a long career as a senior intelligence analyst for several US agencies.


The Dame's Review :

Not since Anne Rice have I read such an original book combining the paranormal and the gothic.  This is a New England horror novel with such a lush and gorgeous bent that it was difficult to tear myself away from it.  Alma Katsu makes it nearly impossible for me to have the courage to review her work.  I think she will be one of those authors we rush to read every time a new book  hits the stands.  Her intelligence bleeds through her every chapter, and the suspense builds as she lays out a story that plays like a movie such as "The Crucible" or "The Scarlet Letter."  This is a book that's laid layer upon layer. You can't help falling in love with her characters.  Simply a spell-binding book.

"The Taker" sat in my "to-be-read" pile for a long time.  The cover didn't excite me and I wasn't drawn to it until my daughter called and told me I just had to read it.  I pulled it out with some reluctance because it wasn't top on my list this week.  Once I began to read, I was mesmerized.  As I've said at the beginning of this post, it was thoroughly unexpected from the beginning.

The love story that anchors the book is so deep and real it will rake your heart with empathetic pain and reminescence of your first and true love.  There is such a depth of feeling Alma Katsu can convey that it's sterling. It rings throughout her book.  Scenes of violence are subtle; capped by the lushness of mystery and beauty but still shuttering to read.  I think this is the sort of genius that the early Anne Rice books showed. 

Her character, Lanore, is naturally brimming with darkness and multi-layers of personality.  She's complex which makes the story so enticing.  Lanore, a form of the french "le noire" or black; i.e., darkness...is a girl/woman who is both innocent and rich in dark hearted desires and plottings.  She's ever the wonderful protagonist because her underlying "evil" is so subtle!  Easy to adore, she's also a character with redeeming qualities that make her one you'll want to protect.

Ms Katsu is a born writer.  This book is no soft historical fiction or gothic paranormal.  This is way above your average book in this genre.  It's a work of art; the type of book that stands head and shoulders above the common one being written these days.

Highly recommended.  If it's in your TBR stack pull it out immediately!  If you haven't already bought it, run to your nearest shop or go online.  This is one you can't miss this year.  And, I'm not stopping here. I'm off to read and review "The Reckoning."

5 eternal stars

Deborah/TheBookishDame