Kate Reading’s stately narration is as expansive as Bertha Truitt herself, the majestic spirit central to this sprawling novel. When Bertha mysteriously appears, as if resurrected, atop a grave in the local cemetery, she bowls over the residents of Salford, Massachusetts—literally, as she immediately sets about establishing a bowling alley in town. Reading’s rich, rounded timbre fits both Bertha's character and the story’s somewhat whimsical sweep. That smooth backdrop leaves Reading room to develop the rougher, edgier voices of the oddballs and lost souls whose lives, set in motion by Bertha’s kinetic energy, play out over much of the novel. With BOWLAWAY, Reading can add to her list of narrative accomplishments helping to turn a bowling alley into an allegory. K.W. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

★ 10/29/2018
McCracken’s stellar novel (after Thunderstruck) opens at the turn of the 20th century with Bertha Truitt being discovered unconscious in a cemetery in little Salford, Mass., seemingly having fallen from the sky. Bertha is middle-aged, plump, and enjoys the absence of a corset, but in spite of her unprepossessing appearance, she initiates a love affair with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revives her at the cemetery. The two marry and have a daughter, Minna. Townspeople, meanwhile, find Bertha charismatic; they begin to dream about her and to credit her with magical powers. With fierce determination, she establishes a bowling alley that uses newfangled candlepins, a game that she (falsely) claims to have invented. Bertha’s loving family completes her happiness before a freak accident (McCracken is a pro at inventing such surprises) derails her plans. Almost everyone—Joe Wear and Virgil, LuEtta and Jeptha, Nahum and Margaret—with whom Bertha has come in contact mystically finds himself or herself in love; often the catalyst is the bowling alley, where they meet. Loss is as prevalent as love, however, and the whims of fate cast a melancholy tinge on characters’ lives. The bowling alley itself is almost a character, reflecting the vicissitudes of history that determine prosperity or its opposite. McCracken writes with a natural lyricism that sports vivid imagery and delightful turns of phrase. Her distinct humor enlivens the many plot twists that propel the narrative, making for a novel readers will sink into and savor. (Feb.)

[McCracken] is a beloved bard of the eccentric.... McCracken writes with exuberant precision, ingenious lyricism, satirical humor, and warmhearted mischief and delight.... This compassionate and rambunctious saga about love, grief, prejudice, and the courage to be one’s self chimes with novels by John Irving, Audrey Niffenegger, and Alice Hoffman.

”To tell a good tale, you need drama—and in this area, Bowlaway spares no expense.... McCracken’s prose is well-tooled, hilarious and tender, thoughtful and jocular. Her characters inhabit their world so completely, so bodily, that they could’ve truly existed.

Elizabeth McCracken’s Bowlaway is so deliciously weird and wise and alive. It’s a page-turner set in a bowling alley, a grief-haunted and hope-raddled book, and a gloriously fresh paean to the ‘perversity of love.’ I loved it—what a generous pour of humor and sorrow and wonder.

It’s impossible not to fall under McCracken’s spell. Bowlaway is a rare treasure, a perfect and precious gift.

Wonderful and weird.... For fans of Elizabeth Strout and Fredrik Backman, Bowlaway, much like Bertha Truitt, is just kooky and charming enough to work.

A story equal parts sorrow and wonder, magical realism and cold, hard reality....  McCracken’s gift is to deliver that pain wrapped in astounding sentences and characters who leap off the page.... The book is best read pen in hand, ready to underline standout sentences.” 

If you think 100 years is an awful lot of time to spend in a small, family-owned and operated bowling alley, think again. In fact, bowling offers the perfect narrative arc.... [McCracken writes,] ‘Turn the page!’ Believe me, you will.

Elizabeth McCracken marries the everyday with the otherworldly. Her electrifying voice brings to life a cast of bizarre characters who lean on, help and flee one another.... Heartbreaking and beautiful.... Bowlaway is an epic of the wins and losses that make up the average life.

[A] strange and brilliant tale.

People who don’t yet know the work of Elizabeth McCracken, prepare for delight.... “Bowlaway” spirits readers into an astonishing world.... McCracken’s prose—canny wisdom laid on in swaths of fearless, quirky, galvanizing language—gives consistent joy. Almost every page glitters with quotable treasure.... [A] finely wrought, moving saga.

In an enthralling, magical story that spans generations, award-winning writer McCracken imbues a candlepin alley with the ability to bowl over sexism.

Bowlaway snatches up every individual that finds joy or tragedy in proximity to the bowling alley and allows them to be observed tenderly and precisely.... McCracken’s love of language is the catching kind.... In Bowlaway, the journey through McCracken’s lush, piercing prose is the destination.

Whimsical, enchanting.... The sort of novel with which you fall in love.... Every page seems to provide the kind of writing that makes a reader stop cold, savoring the moment…. [Bowlaway] takes your hand and hurries you into an inviting, curious world, leaving you happily bereft at its end.

Every now and then, a novel reinvents the language of storytelling in dazzling ways.... A comic marvel... The master stylist uses the offbeat lilt of fairy tales to spin a quintessentially New England saga.... Rolls a strike right through the heart of the American epic.

McCracken’s delightful prose and rich historical details make this the perfect book to get lost in.

Reading Elizabeth McCracken—the gorgeously-put-together sentences parading the pages like models on a Paris runway; the crazy, original insights; the definitive, wholly fictional pronouncements—is like going on an automotive safari. . . . I could not stop reading.

Bowlaway is that most improbable of literary phenomena: a buoyant, joyful, rollicking yarn of sadness and loss.... McCracken’s gloriously vibrant and boisterously surprising narrative voice is one of the great triumphs of Bowlaway.... Reminiscent of John Irving, with echoes of Dickens.... A tour de force.

[McCracken has] considerable gifts as a novelist [and] instinctive access to the most intricate threads of human thought and feeling.... This novel’s cast grows epic, but McCracken is always most impressive when she works small, when she is describing movie kisses or corsets or simply loneliness and longing.

McCracken’s newest novel, a 20th-century family epic centered on candlepin bowling, is populated by strange, excellent characters, and unfolds with all the offbeat coziness and heartache of a great American fable: molasses floods, workplace fires, surprising heirs, and all.

An oddball masterpiece.... Elizabeth McCracken holds a funhouse mirror up to the Great American Novel. Whimsy and weirdness spark at Bowlaway’s edges.... This is McCracken’s masterpiece, a story of reinvention.... The author has reframed the family saga for the misfit: that truest American character.

Death and life, frosted with macabre comedy.... [McCracken] lures us in with her witty voice and oddball characters but then kicks the wind out of us. She never misses the infamous 7-10 split, managing to hit Annie Proulx and Anne Tyler with the same ball.... Endlessly surprising.

Wildly entertaining... [A] wonderfully unpredictable multi-generational saga which revolves around a Massachusetts bowling alley.... Bowlaway celebrates the oddest of oddballs and the freakiest of freak accidents with wit and heart. To read McCracken’s inimitably clever sentences and follow her quirky narrative twists is to be constantly delighted.

Every now and then, a novel reinvents the language of storytelling in dazzling ways.... A comic marvel... The master stylist uses the offbeat lilt of fairy tales to spin a quintessentially New England saga.... Rolls a strike right through the heart of the American epic.

Townsfolk cast small balls at straight pins in hopes of bowling away their troubles, but this being McCracken, a novelist who balances the sweet and the dark, there’s ample heartache in their collective future.

Elizabeth McCracken is one of my favorite writers. Or, to put it another way: I’ve read everything she’s written . . . and there’s nothing I haven’t liked and admired enormously . . . Anything new by her is an excuse for wild, drunken celebration.

McCracken knows all kinds of subtle, enticing secrets of the heart and conveys them in silky, transparent language.

Elizabeth McCracken is a national treasure.

Kate Reading’s stately narration is as expansive as Bertha Truitt herself, the majestic spirit central to this sprawling novel. When Bertha mysteriously appears, as if resurrected, atop a grave in the local cemetery, she bowls over the residents of Salford, Massachusetts—literally, as she immediately sets about establishing a bowling alley in town. Reading’s rich, rounded timbre fits both Bertha's character and the story’s somewhat whimsical sweep. That smooth backdrop leaves Reading room to develop the rougher, edgier voices of the oddballs and lost souls whose lives, set in motion by Bertha’s kinetic energy, play out over much of the novel. With BOWLAWAY, Reading can add to her list of narrative accomplishments helping to turn a bowling alley into an allegory. K.W. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

★ 2018-10-15

Bleak House meets Our Town in a century-spanning novel set in a New England bowling alley.

More than many writers, McCracken (Thunderstruck and Other Stories, 2014, etc.) understands the vast variety of ways to be human and the vast variety of ways human beings have come up with to love each other, not all of them benevolent. She also understands how all those different ways spring from the same yearning impulse. She names her new novel—which she calls "a genealogy"—after its setting, a candlepin bowling alley founded by the novel's matriarch, who is said to have invented the game. "Maybe somebody else had invented the game first. That doesn't matter. We have all of us invented things that others have beat us to: walking upright, a certain sort of sandwich involving avocado and an onion roll, a minty sweet cocktail, ourselves, romantic love, human life." McCracken's parade of Dickensian grotesques fall in love, feud, reproduce, vanish, and reappear, all with a ridiculous dignity that many readers, if they're honest, will cringe to recognize from their own lives. The plot is stylized: One character dies in the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, another by spontaneous human combustion. There are orphans, secret wills, and hidden treasure. But unlike Dickens', McCracken's plot works more by iteration than clockwork, like linked stories, or a series of views of the same landscape from different vantage points in different seasons, or the frames in a bowling game. Her psychological acuity transforms what might otherwise have been a twee clutter of oddball details into moving metaphors for the human condition. "Our subject is love," she writes. "Unrequited love, you might think, the heedless headstrong ball that hurtles nearsighted down the alley. It has to get close before it can pick out which pin it loves the most, which pin it longs to set spinning. Then I love you! Then blammo. The pins are reduced to a pile, each one entirely all right in itself. Intact and bashed about. Again and again, the pins stand for it until they're knocked down."

Parents and children, lovers, brothers and sisters, estranged spouses, work friends and teammates all slam themselves together and fling themselves apart across the decades in the glorious clatter of McCracken's unconventional storytelling.