Author discusses book in Marblehead

MARBLEHEAD – A crowd of 90 packed the meeting room of the Abbot Public Library Wednesday evening to hear a woman talk about magic.”Maybe there’s a little bit of magic about the book,” said Brunonia Barry, the author of “The Lace Reader,” a book that seems to be taking on a life of its own.If the magic is there, it’s had a long time to grow. Barry was named at the insistence of her grandfather, an alumnus of Brown University who wrote fight songs for his beloved alma mater. She decided to take it on as she grew older – Brunonia is Latin for Brown – and today she is the only Brunonia to be found on Google.Her grandfather did her one other favor. When she was 4 years old he told her she was a novelist.It took her years to find out what that meant and last night, after seven years of writing and another year of unprecedentedly lucky marketing, Barry introduced a Marblehead audience to her first novel, “The Lace Reader.”Harper Collins issued a 200,000-copy first edition Tuesday. She spoke at the House of Seven Gables in her adopted hometown Tuesday night – a long night, where someone who reads her blog (www.lacereader.com/blog/) asked her to do the loon cry she mentioned July 11. Last night was her second stop, in the town where she grew up.The event was sponsored by the Spirit of ’76 Bookstore, where she has been a customer and friend for the past seven years. They carried copies of the book when she self-published it last year, but a favorable review in Publisher’s Weekly changed everything.With her book purchased at auction for more than $2 million by Harper Collins after a four-company, 12-hour bidding war, Barry faces a book tour that will last until November – and in view of that she predicted last night that she may well miss the January deadline for her second novel. She has already spoken with Harper Collins about an extension.She described her novel as a Joseph Campbell-style hero’s journey for a woman, a journey that is more collaborative than the usual heroic saga. Her audience, overwhelmingly female, may well agree.One of Barry’s journeys has been unsuccessful so far. She admitted that despite years of searching she has never found anyone who could read the future in lace – a talent her heroine has.And she handled the inevitable dicey question with poise. “Can you explain the ending?” one woman asked.”I’ll talk to you afterward,” she said.