What do readers think of The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry? Write your own review.

Brunonia Barry's character development draws one immediately into the lives of the characters themselves. Her ability to navigate from present to past and back again seemss to flow neatly; fiction and fact and fantasy blend sometimes without the reader even realizing it. I loved all the allusions to Hawthorne and Melville and Old Salem. For all these reasons, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and am recommending it to my book club for this coming year.

This is a very hard book to put down once you start reading and I liked it far better than Barry’s first book, The Lace Reader. Perhaps because for me the magical realism within The Map of True Places carried a bit more realism than fantasy. Zee Finch, with her funny name and motherless childhood kept my interest at speed as she searched to find her own way through her past, the present and finally centering on what she wanted to aim for in the future.

The complex characters, the atmospheric foray into Salem’s historical past and Zee's father's developing struggle with the onslaught of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s all added to the complexities of life that kept shining throughout this novel.

I have hesitated between a 4 and 5 star rating for this book. I leaned toward 5 stars because as the story progressed I found that I couldn't put it down and read the last half straight through! Yes, it is not great literature, has a somewhat slow beginning, at times confusing plot, and a bit too coincidental. However, any story that keeps you in its spell is worth reading and earning 5 stars. I thought Ms. Barry particularly captured the conflicting emotions of caring for a failing parent. A book group would have many points to spark discussion. Not least of which, should family secrets be told?

This book captured me from the very first page all the way up until the last especially since quite a bit of the story is set near where I live in Massachusetts. Boston and the other places aren't that far from me so it was great reading about some of the things I have seen firsthand. I think that this book would appeal to anyone from around the Massachusetts area if for no other reason than they might be familiar with the places mentioned. Another group of people who I think may enjoy this book are those that are interested in how people work, what they believe in and how it shapes us as humans and if we can change how we are later in life.

Having read and enjoyed "The Lace Reader" I was looking forward to reading "The Map of True Places" and hoping for twists, turns and surprises once again and was not disappointed. Though I felt the story moved a bit slow in the beginning, I couldn't read fast enough for the suspenseful conclusion.

The characters are well developed and I feel like I want to know what's next for them. Well done.

This is a well-written book that mixes psychological and interpersonal issues with enough suspense to keep the reader interested in the unfolding of the story. The changes that the heroine of the story goes through also challenge the reader to examine his or her own life story.

Brunonia Barry's intertwines many lives together very well while telling the story of how Zee Finch learns the truth about her family. The author concentrates on Zee's life and intersperses the story with other characters as necessary. This technique makes the story move at a nice pace while telling just enough background information.

If “The Map of True Places” were slid into a book MRI (bMRI), we would likely see faint yellow patches in the plot and idea regions but the character region would be lit bright red. Barry found the sweet spot for her characters, neither vessels for carrying a plot nor too squirrely to believe. In fact, her characters seem observed, rather than created. Places (maritime New England) and afflictions (Parkinson’s disease) are characters too, changing with time and circumstance. Every good novel should make you want to do something. I want to learn the names of the signpost stars in the wheeling night sky, not to navigate the open sea but to be more at home wherever I find myself.