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Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML: A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alley From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the twentieth centuryâ??nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her personâ??Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford's most defining landmarkâ??with Bertha its most notable resident. When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha's defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills. In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family's myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that div… (more)
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“He was born in a bowling alley, and he planned to die in one.”
“...grief looks like nothing from the outside, it looks like
Bertha Truitt, is a stranger to the town of Salford, Massachusetts. She is found unconscious in a cemetery, with no idea, where she came from. She becomes an unforgettable force in this small New England town, as she starts the area's first bowling alley. She is smart, scrappy and far ahead of her time. She is the foundation of this novel, which begins around the turn of the century and follows this family and the other bowling alley participants, as they move through the following decades.
McCracken's writing is stellar throughout and she has populated her novel with many memorable characters, that you will have a hard time shaking off. Her storytelling style may not appeal to all readers but for those that relish this approach, will have spend a fine time in Salford.
The novel is strange and rambling, but McCracken's writing is beautiful. The book is full of delightful turns of phrase, vivid characters, and quirky situations. It's worth reading for the writing alone, which is good because the story itself rambles and doesn't seem to have much purpose.
What he needed was to fall in love with another woman, but she saw he was too vain. Ordinary happiness would be a dent in his armor.
To be haunted? That set you apart.
This is an odd book, full of whimsey and colorful characters. Beginning with the discovery of Bertha Truitt, lying in the cemetery who, upon being revived, makes a new life for herself in the small Massachusetts town she landed upon, opening a candlepin bowling alley, building an octagonal house and marrying the doctor who tended her. That bowling alley becomes a refuge for outcasts and a place where women can be together.
Nobody believed that this so-called Nahum Truitt was a child of Bertha's. The height of him, the denunciations, the way he talked. You could die of boredom. You longed to.
The great strength of this novel is McCracken's writing. By the time I'd finished it, there were dozens of post-it notes sticking out from between the pages, marking out remarkable descriptions and gorgeous sentences. But the beautiful writing did not hide that there were too many characters. Every time I began to understand a character and to fall into their story, they were gone, often forever, lost in the great flood of quirky characters and weird situations. There was never anything or anyone to hold onto. There's no question that the writing is extraordinarily good, but it turns out that even that is no substitution for plot and character development.
He had inherited his predecessor's office as it was, with the books and the ottoman, the manual typewriter that reminded him of a skeleton in a natural history museum--a small dinosaur, one so unfortunately shaped it existed mostly as food for larger dinosaurs. An aquatic animal, probably, with an alphabetic spine.
Bertha is transported to a hospital where “it could not be determined whether she had amnesia or a privacy so pigheaded it might yet prove fatal.” Each time she’s asked where she came from, she replies, “I’m here now.” Bertha decides to remain in Salford, marrying a local doctor, building a bowling alley, and generally upending convention. Then her untimely death sets in motion a series of unlikely appearances and dubious claims, her influence continuing to reverberate through the years.
Bowlaway: A Novel, the sixth book from Austin’s Elizabeth McCracken, is literary historical fiction beginning early in the twentieth century and spanning the next eight decades, during which we follow the fates and fortunes of the eccentric characters whose lives are affected, for good and for ill, by the appearance—and recurring reappearances, usually in memory, occasionally in effigy—of Bertha Truitt and candlepin bowling.
Related by an omniscient, no-nonsense narrator, with an assist from a sly Greek chorus addressing the reader like an aside delivered to the camera (“the January sunlight cut through the eight windows of the cupola—no, let’s be honest, only four, that’s as much as is mathematically possible”), Bowlaway showcases McCracken’s trademark sharp but indulgent wit, a style as distinctive as Stevie Ray Vaughn’s guitar.
The pace is quick and even, the sociology and history of bowling alley development unexpectedly interesting. Narrative flow is interrupted in a couple of places, one of which is a meandering episode involving the making of an effigy of Bertha, the other about a ghost hunter, whose purpose in the story is unclear. Happily, well placed plot twists persist to an oddly satisfying end, allowing a little of the original mystery to linger.
Chuckle-aloud dialogue abounds—“Men fail to speak their minds when women are around, for fear of contradiction. That woman there looks especial contradictory.”—as do marvelous juxtapositions—“Bodily [Bertha] was a matron, jowly, bosomy, bottomy, odd. At heart she was a gamine.”
McCracken’s facility with the delicate yet robust detail that gets at the nature of a thing so that you pause with recognition is a joy. This is true in instances small, such as Bertha speaking in a “papercut tone” and “accordion cats that got longer when you picked it up by the middle;” and instances revelatory, as when McCracken writes of how “…people, women especially, are leery of mothers of dead children, or too gentle around them. The bereaved mother is a combustible gas, [another’s] baby is a match…” McCracken’s personal experience of losing a child rings through her prose, producing an acknowledging, appreciative flinch in this reader.
I was immediately immersed and charmed by Bowlaway, as I was by McCracken’s The Giant’s House many years ago. I am reminded of the cleverness of Much Ado About Nothing, the slapstick of Lucille Ball, and the domestic quirks of Anne Tyler’s Baltimore, all in the service of exploring absence, the value judgments we make based on appearance, the many varieties of love, the peculiarly American knack for reinventing ourselves, our selfish ability to justify our desires, and also our generosity in deciding to be for others what they need.
This is not an easy combination to pull off, but McCracken accomplishes it admirably and beautifully, with aplomb.
Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.
Bowlaway is a saga--more the saga of a community than, as usual, a family, although it follows one trhough three generations. It begins around 1900 when a woman, Bertha Truitt, is found unconscious in the cemetery of a small Massachusetts town. On her person is a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold. Bertha decides to marry the African-American doctor who revives her--the first, perhaps, of the actions that shock her new neighbors. A bit of an entrepreneur, she opens a candlepin bowling alley and--even more shocking--allows women to bowl alongside the men. Despite her age, Bertha gives birth to a daughter, Mina, who suddenly finds herself packed off to the home of an uncle she has never met when her mother dies in a freak (and freakish) accident and her father, alcoholic and despairing, disappears (apparently a victim of spontaneous combustion). She leaves behind Maggie, an orphan girl who was hired to take care of Mina and who spends the rest of her life grieving their separation.
This is where the story started to get away from me. Bertha had promised to leave the bowling alley to Joe Wear, a retiring and rather slow young man who discovered her in the cemetery and who has been a loyal employee. But a man appears who claims to be her son from an earlier life. He takes over the successful bowling alley, kicks out the women, and generally upsets the town.
Bowlaway is loaded with many--perhaps too many--quirky characters, and each of them has a past full of mysteries, myths, and secrets that are gradually unfolded. Many reviewers have loved the novel's weirdness, but I just felt annoyed and confused by it. I've enjoyed earlier work by the author and might be willing to give this one another try in print--but not for a while.
The entire town is curious as
She hires two men, Joe and Jeptha, who are considered outcasts in the town. They are fiercely loyal to Bertha, and even when Bertha encourages the town’s women to bowl at the alley, people come to accept this unusual woman and her ways.
Bertha and Leviticus have a baby girl whom they dote on. When Bertha dies in a bizarre accident, Leviticus falls apart and sends the young child away to live with his family. Soon, a man named Nahum shows up claiming to be Bertha’s son from a previous marriage and wants to claim the bowling alley as his inheritance.
This intense story weaves its way through the years. We follow the large cast of characters throughout their lives, all revolving around the bowling alley. McCracken writes the novel with some magical elements within it, and it is a unique story, but she is such an amazing storyteller the reader becomes captivated by it.
Her characters and their journeys are fascinating and heartbreaking. We see how the past influences the present, and how secrets and choices can have such lasting consequences. McCracken’s writing is just stunning and lovely, and this book has received much critical praise.
“Bowlaway” is not for everyone, but if you are looking for a big, sprawling story set in a small bowling alley with characters who are unforgettable, definitely give it a try. McCracken’s previous book, “The Giant’s House,” also featured characters that are outside the societal norms, and is just as wonderful.
You have:
random woman who appears>business owner and respected community member
orphan>servant girl>wife>mother>bowling alley owner>mother-in-law and friend
goofy pinsetter>husband and father
pinsetter>alley manager>alley owner>art model>moneyed old man
And more.
*The cover art does NOT match the house described in the story, nor is there a seagull in the story (another bird that is not a gull, yes). This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. Editorial and marketing were not talking to each other, and whomever did the cover art did not read the manuscript. Or they bought unrelated art on the "good enough" principal. I wonder what the author thinks?
The novel covers decades, during which characters scatter like bowling pins. Some die in
Bertha Truitt, whom McCracken describes as "a matron, jowly, bosomy, bottomy, odd," shows up prostrate one night in the Salford cemetery, never explaining where she came from or how she got there. A young man named Joe Wear comes to her aid, as does a black doctor named Leviticus Sprague. For Bertha and Dr. Sprague, it is love at first sight. Or as the author describes Bertha's feelings, "She felt a plunk in the pond of her heart." They marry, have a daughter, Minna, and build a large house as odd as Bertha. And she builds a bowling alley.
Most of the story occurs in, around or at least about that bowling alley. Again to quote McCracken, "Our subject is love because our subject is bowling." The novel may not amount to a perfect game, yet still it offers as much fun as any game in any alley.
[The Great Boston Molasses Flood occurred on January 15, 1919, and I’ve always found it purely fascinating. They say it smelled like molasses in the North End for decades from those two million gallons of rampaging sweetness.]
If I actually wrote real reviews, there would be much more to this. But, personally, this is all it would take to spark my interest.
From the moment Bertha Truitt lands, literally, in the Salford, MA, cemetery, you know you are in for a different kind of reading experience packed with whimsy, oddness, joy, and sorrow, and a good serving of the last. Elizabeth McCracken conveys all this with an unusual
Bertha Truitt seems to come from nowhere when discovered in Salford cemetery one frosty spring morning. She arrives in peculiar garb with a Gladstone bag which “contained an abandoned corset, one small bowling ball, one slender candlepin, and, under a false bottom, fifteen pounds of gold.” With this, the mystery about her, her unique apparel, and ball and candlepin, she establishes herself in Salford, builds a six-lane bowling alley, acquires Dr. Leviticus Sprague, the African-American doctor attending her, as her mate, and proceeds to change the town. Women of Salford leave their houses for the salubrious benefits of candlestick bowling, two derelict men find something like purpose in their lives, she had a child nannied by a woman who has her wish for a family fulfilled, though not necessarily happily, and another generation who owe their lives to this progenitor but who don’t fare as well as they hoped. And through it all, for all the eighty years, there remains, for good and bad, the bowling alley that eventually becomes the Bowlaway until it, too, goes away.
McCracken’s novel in its unique way captures and illuminates the variability of life. All the characters, of which there are many, experience ups and downs. They express their hopes that they can tell only themselves. They suffer silently. They make poor decisions. They struggle as family. They wish for one thing and often get another. Here in this novel, they all share a bond, no matter how distant, based on their connection to Bertha and the Bowlaway. There is some joy here and more disappointment, something like life itself. And, yes, if you are wondering, you do learn something of Bertha’s origin, and how she manages to exist beyond her grave under the care of a character who reappears transformed. So, life does offer hope, after all.
From the moment Bertha Truitt lands, literally, in the Salford, MA, cemetery, you know you are in for a different kind of reading experience packed with whimsy, oddness, joy, and sorrow, and a good serving of the last. Elizabeth McCracken conveys all this with an unusual
Bertha Truitt seems to come from nowhere when discovered in Salford cemetery one frosty spring morning. She arrives in peculiar garb with a Gladstone bag which “contained an abandoned corset, one small bowling ball, one slender candlepin, and, under a false bottom, fifteen pounds of gold.” With this, the mystery about her, her unique apparel, and ball and candlepin, she establishes herself in Salford, builds a six-lane bowling alley, acquires Dr. Leviticus Sprague, the African-American doctor attending her, as her mate, and proceeds to change the town. Women of Salford leave their houses for the salubrious benefits of candlestick bowling, two derelict men find something like purpose in their lives, she had a child nannied by a woman who has her wish for a family fulfilled, though not necessarily happily, and another generation who owe their lives to this progenitor but who don’t fare as well as they hoped. And through it all, for all the eighty years, there remains, for good and bad, the bowling alley that eventually becomes the Bowlaway until it, too, goes away.
McCracken’s novel in its unique way captures and illuminates the variability of life. All the characters, of which there are many, experience ups and downs. They express their hopes that they can tell only themselves. They suffer silently. They make poor decisions. They struggle as family. They wish for one thing and often get another. Here in this novel, they all share a bond, no matter how distant, based on their connection to Bertha and the Bowlaway. There is some joy here and more disappointment, something like life itself. And, yes, if you are wondering, you do learn something of Bertha’s origin, and how she manages to exist beyond her grave under the care of a character who reappears transformed. So, life does offer hope, after all.
But I started to lose interest in it about a quarter through. I didn't want to give it up so fast, maybe I just wasn't in the right
It starts with a woman in a graveyard. She has a bag
Do we ever find out what her backstory is and how she got to that graveyard and why she had that bag? Nope, not really. We do learn a thing or two about her past, and can maybe guess at some more of it, but it's all sort of... oblique. As are a lot of things about the book, including the writing style, which is also not quite like anything else I've read, in some way I have a weird amount of trouble putting my finger on. It's not hard to read, mind you. And it's good. You can absolutely tell McCracken knows what she's doing and is firmly in control of her prose. But it's hard to feel like you quite know where you are with it.
That's also true of the narrative itself, which was never quite what I was expecting. Characters you think are going to be the focus for a good long time will suddenly die in bizarre circumstances, or leave town for decades, and you'll find yourself sliding into someone else's POV for a while, and then back out of it again, not all at once, but still before you've had time to feel completely at home with it.
Ultimately, though... it works. It was certainly an interesting reading experience, and, in the end, not an unsatisfying one. Somehow. I'm genuinely kind of impressed with McCracken for pulling it off, despite how much of the novel I spent trying to decide whether it was, in fact, working for me or not.
At the turn of the 20th century, Bertha Truitt, described as matronly and jowly,
Bowlaway follows Bertha Truitt and her husband, Dr. Sprague, and all their descendants in this small town in Massachusetts. Every character under the spell of Truitt's Alley has their own demons, their own agendas, their own desires. As the years pass, the bowling alley must change with the times as well as the aims of those who run it and those whose souls are captivated by the candlepins. Bowlaway has many stories of love and loss, and is handled with tenderness.
McCracken's writing is sharp and full of joie de vivre. I had to get out my tape flags to mark pages several times because her wordsmithing was so intelligent. It's getting a special place on my shelf because I know I'll smile every time I see it.
Many thanks to HarperCollins for an advance copy in exchange for my review. It was a privilege to read.
There are many more characters with mysterious back stories, and the bowling alley and becomes the setting for a lots of twists and turns, including battles over the ownership of the building and business and other family disputes, and complicated dramas. I really enjoyed the ambiguity, the mixture of dry humour and real sadness, and the evocation of the story's small town setting.