"Bowlaway" by Elizabeth McCracken book reviewer

Who could get away from this line of opening?

"They found a body in the Salford cemetery, but on the surface and alive."

It sounds like a mysterious beginning of murder, but then, what's far-fetched slips: "The Gladstone bag beside her contained an abandoned corset, a small bowling ball, a thin candle and, under a false bottom , fifteen pounds of gold. "

Death and life, frosted by a macabre comedy: that's why we appreciate Elizabeth McCracken since the publication of her first novel, "The Giant's House," more than 20 years ago. She never promises to free us from pain, but she still has just enough heart to bear.

His new novel, "Bowlaway," is a sadly inspired family saga that begins in the early twentieth century and revolves around a bowling alley in the small town of Salford, Mbadachusetts, north of Boston. "Our subject is love," announces the narrator, "because our subject is bowling." But not ordinary love and not the ordinary bowling – nothing is ordinary in this story. The inhabitants of Salford play by candlelight: this smaller and harder version of New England: "a game of purity for the ancient Puritans".

Once restored, the woman found alive in the cemetery – "without the expected underwear" – claims to be the inventor of the candlestick bowling. This seems unlikely, but it is a woman who does not shrink from opposition. Her name is Bertha Truitt and, with her big bads and her babylike smile, she confuses people. Two months after her alarming appearance, she built a six-lane bowling alley and captivated the city's imagination. "It was the weirdest combination of the future and the past that anyone has ever met," says the narrator. Where does it come from? Does she have parents? Is it possible, as some people suspect, that Bertha has fallen from heaven, that she is a temporal traveler, or that the devil of Salford hunts down the fens?

Such supernatural possibilities floated around Bertha's alibi, like a stench in a bowling alley. But it's really a novel of characters, no mysteries, and Bertha is a whirlwind of personality capable of disrupting Salford's frozen patterns and attracting people to her orbit. This is an African-American doctor who deserves his love, but never that of the city. A pair of misfits find the "noble work" in Truitt's alleys as pinners and become Bertha's most ardent followers. And once Bertha announced the innumerable benefits of bowling for health – "cut the waist, tighten the arm and lift the bust", women begin to arrive at bowling "in the open, a show".

The novel is populated by a number of adults who still feel the sting of their orphaned childhood. They seek lives they can not own, or feel haunted by ruinous affections that they dare not name. They are people who struggle in vain "to keep their eccentricities for themselves". The placement and dismantling of the pins gives these solitary characters a few hours of order and fellowship, an opportunity to imagine communion with others. After all, as the narrator says, "it is unbearable to think that our private thoughts are really private."

But if it's a wonderfully strange place, it's also absurdly dangerous. A mourning character burns spontaneously, leaving only a charred shin to identify him. A contortionist must starve in a small box. Others are crushed by a piece of granite, drowned in molbades or beaten to death with a bowling ball.

Indeed, the tone of "Bowlaway" flickers like a pin that could fall into comedy or tragedy. McCracken's technique is nastiness, her way of attracting us with her witty voice and weird characters, but she's taking our breath away. She never misses the famous separation of 7-10, managing to hit Annie Proulx and Anne Tyler with the same ball.

Many of these episodes also serve as a reminder of what a masterful new master's writer, McCracken. (Her 2014 collection, "Thunderstruck", was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Story Award. "Here's your hat, hurry up", her first collection dating back to 1993 had just been reissued. At the center of "Bowlaway," there is a chapter titled "Rattled" in which Truitt's headmaster of Alleys challenges a mother to play a single game to determine whether women can remain clients. regular. It's a very risky bet – and a tragicomedy perfectly designed to include everyone's hopes and fears in the alleyway that day, even the terrifying little man putting pins. Few captured writers and McCracken ensure that ruin and relief can strike a soul at the same time.

"Grief does not shape your life," says the narrator. "It stuns the form. He separates, he detaches, he dissolves. he explodes. It's a fair description of what happens to these weird people. Over the decades, "Bowlaway" follows the unlikely trajectories of lives hard hit by joy and sorrow. The entangled generations that follow Bertha have little sense of what it was, but their experiences are still influenced by its kinetic energy. Such is the endless journey of genealogy in this novel, full of compbadion.

Ron Charles writes about books for the Washington Post and hosts TotallyHipVideoBookReview.com.

On February 8 at 7 pm, Elizabeth McCracken will speak with novelist Matthew Klam of Politics and Prose at 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington.