The narrative momentum of the novel, in other words, is generated not by some great desire on the reader’s part to know where the Truitt gold is hidden, but rather by McCracken’s language, by her clever and economical use of non sequiturs to introduce new scenes or reflections, and by her evolving characters. Buxom and beaming Bertha Truitt is the stranger who brings the sport to town: when she greets her first Salfordians, she is holding a ball and candlepin “like a queen in an ancient painting, orb and scepter.” Like the Victorian novels the more bookish characters of Bertha’s generation are reading, Bowlaway features things like lost treasure and a disputed inheritance, but these function more as postmodern winks at the reader than as actual plot devices. What could be a clearer indication of the novel’s magnetic, mind-occupying power?īowlaway opens in the late Victorian age, with the arrival of candlepin bowling-“A game of purity for former Puritans, a game of devotion that will always fail”-in the town of Salford, Massachusetts.

Halfway through an article about how, in medieval Germany, the sport was a religious ritual representing the toppling of sin and paganism (the pins) by Christianity (the ball), you’ll look up and realize where you are-probably a short drive from the nearest alley, should you wish to topple some pagans yourself. It is a sign of the imagination and quality of Elizabeth McCracken’s new novel, Bowlaway, that after reading it one finds oneself spontaneously researching the history of bowling.

Bowlaway elizabeth mccracken