The Map of True Places

Psychotherapist Zee Finch's life is beset by turmoil. Her father's in the final stages of Parkinson's disease, she's drinking too much, she's stalling her fiancé about marriage plans, and one of her patients has committed suicide. Alyssa Bresnahan's perfect diction and cool, precise pacing could seem at odds with the disastrous state of Zee's mental health. However, as the story unfolds, Bresnahan's performance allows for moments of gripping suspense, pathos, and frustration as Zee tries to map her true place in the world. While Barry's plotting is heavy with Transcendental philosophy, fey legend, celestial reckoning, and human guilt, her poignant descriptions of debilitating illness, lifelong secrets, and romantic stirrings, along with Bresnahan's capable narration, turn THE MAP OF TRUE PLACES into an engrossing listening experience. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

March 29, 2010
Barry's considerable if overplotted latest delves into the long-lingering effects of a mother's suicide. Fifteen years ago, Maureen Finch, a discontented wife and bipolar mother to 13-year-old Zee, commits suicide while Zee watches. Flash forward to the present day, and Zee is a therapist with a new patient, Lilly Braedon, who is far too much like Maureen, and after Lilly kills herself, Zee walks away from her practice and travels back to Salem, Mass., to visit her father and his partner, Melville, only to find that her father's Parkinson's disease is advancing rapidly. With Melville missing, Zee becomes a full-time caregiver and must face the half-truths and twisted memories that have compromised her connection to her father, all the while examining how her mother's legacy extends into her life and a fledgling romance. This is a lovingly told story with many well-drawn characters, who sooner or later reconsider the courses charted by personal decisions and circumstance. But there is almost too much story here, and Barry (The Lace Reader
) compromises the third act with a weak subplot about Lilly's traumatic last days that reads as an intrusion on an otherwise well-told tale.