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LITERARY FICTION <\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n \u201cThey found a body in the Salford Cemetery, but aboveground and alive.\u201d Thus is the hook set. Bertha Truitt appears to have dropped from the sky\u2014there are no footprints in the frosty ground around her\u2014with nothing but the clothes on her back and a Gladstone bag with an odd inventory: \u201cone abandoned corset, one small bowling ball, one slender candlepin, and, under a false bottom, fifteen pounds of gold.\u201d This is how one properly sets up a mystery in two paragraphs. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bertha is transported to a hospital where \u201cit could not be determined whether she had amnesia or a privacy so pigheaded it might yet prove fatal.\u201d Each time she\u2019s asked where she came from, she replies, \u201cI\u2019m here now.\u201d 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. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bowlaway: A Novel<\/a>, <\/em><\/span><\/span>the sixth book from Austin\u2019s <\/span><\/span>Elizabeth McCracken<\/span><\/a><\/span>, 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\u2014and recurring reappearances, usually in memory, occasionally in effigy\u2014of Bertha Truitt and candlepin bowling. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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 (\u201cthe January sunlight cut through the eight windows of the cupola\u2014no, let\u2019s be honest, only four, that\u2019s as much as is mathematically possible\u201d), Bowlaway <\/em>showcases McCracken\u2019s trademark sharp but indulgent wit, a style as distinctive as Stevie Ray Vaughn\u2019s guitar. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chuckle-aloud dialogue abounds\u2014\u201cMen fail to speak their minds when women are around, for fear of contradiction. That woman there looks especial contradictory.\u201d\u2014as do marvelous juxtapositions\u2014\u201cBodily [Bertha] was a matron, jowly, bosomy, bottomy, odd. At heart she was a gamine.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n McCracken\u2019s 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 \u201cpapercut tone\u201d and \u201caccordion cats that got longer when you picked it up by the middle;\u201d and instances revelatory, as when McCracken writes of how \u201c\u2026people, women especially, are leery of mothers of dead children, or too gentle around them. The bereaved mother is a combustible gas, [another\u2019s] baby is a match\u2026\u201d McCracken\u2019s personal experience of losing a child rings through her prose, producing an acknowledging, appreciative flinch in this reader. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nElizabeth McCracken<\/span><\/a> <\/span>
\nBowlaway: A Novel <\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span>
\nEcco
\nHardcover, 978-0-0628-6285-3 (also available as an e-book and an audiobook), 384 pgs., $27.99
\nFebruary 5, 2019<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n