Bowlaway

Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken (2019)

The story begins in the early 1900s when Bertha Truitt is found unconscious in a cemetery in a town where nobody knows her. She won't tell anyone about her past, saying only "I'm here now." She stays in the town- the fictional town of Salford, Massachusetts- and opens a candlepin bowling alley. As if her mysterious origins weren't scandalous enough, she also marries the doctor who first attended her, a black man named Leviticus Sprague. They build an octagonal house, have a kid, and the story continues long after their deaths, but stays focused on the bowling alley and those who continue to run it.

Filled with secrets, lies, longings, and lives of dissatisfaction, this story is just as quirky as you'd expect from Elizabeth McCracken. For someone who's been living in Texas for a long time now, it's clear that she'll never get New England out of her system and Bowlaway is filled with elements specific to the region, from candlepin bowling itself to the Great Molasses Flood. She also skirts the paranormal with a little spontaneous human combustion and a mysterious creature known locally as the Salford Devil.

Had this come from a different author, I would have been turned off by a book about bowling and never picked it up, but I will always and forever read everything that Elizabeth McCracken writes. As it turns out, it's only kind of about bowling, but mostly about all the people who are bowling and running the bowling alley. It wasn't terribly long and covered an extensive timespan, yet somehow I still felt like I got a good feel for all the characters, which is the most important part of any book for me.

Spanning about 80 years, we see a number of characters die during the story, many before their time, so it was actually pretty sad if you think about it. But tempered with McCracken's trademark humor and wit, it didn't feel nearly as depressing as it could have had it been written by someone else.

This is only her third novel, after The Giant's House (1996) and Niagara Falls All Over Again (2001) but she has also written short stories and a memoir and excels in all of those forms. Honestly, she's one of those authors who could write literally anything and I'd read it and probably love it.

Thunderstruck and Other Stories

Thunderstruck and Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken (2014)

Elizabeth McCracken's long-awaited (at least by me) new book is a collection of nine short stories, culminating in the title story "Thunderstruck." The longest story in the collection, it is possibly also the most heartbreaking, which is saying a lot for this book. A family reacts to their daughter's troubled, wild behavior by packing up the entire family and going to France. Convinced that she's doing so much better and their troubles are over, at least for now, they are completely blindsided by tragedy.

"Property" surprised me when I began reading it and realized it wasn't the first time. I poked around and found that it was included in The Best American Short Stories 2011, and for good reason. A man named Stony plans to bring his German wife to Maine and they rent a house. But before they can leave Europe she dies suddenly and he arrives at the rental, eventually, alone. He dislikes the house intensely, boxing up its contents and storing them in favor of his own things. The tension, and contention, between Stony and the family who own the house is discomfiting.

In perhaps the most unusual and surprising story, "Some Terpsichore," a young woman becomes a singer to accompany a man who plays the saw. They form an act and also a relationship. Eventually, she is forced to face the truth about the man she fell in love with, and also about her singing. She still has the saw.

"Juliet" takes place in a public library, clearly recognizable as a library where I used to work (McCracken worked there as well but, alas, not at the same time as me.) A librarian recounts a violent crime committed by one library regular upon another (though not at the library), and expertly captures the way we all see only certain aspects of people's lives, but not others. It's a strange kind of voyeurism that we librarians practice.

I had a moment of sadness when I finished reading and realized that again, already, I have no more McCracken to read because I've read all her stuff. I'm actually tempted to go back and start from the beginning. Sometimes I find short stories tough to read, especially the longer ones, but I just enjoy her style so much that I don't care what it is. If she wrote poetry I'd read it, or a play, or  a western.

It's difficult to pinpoint what it is that grabs me in such a particular way. The stories are moving and surprising and poignant, the characters just quirky enough to be real, but the moments that give me the most satisfaction are when I come across descriptions like "It looked as though someone had taken a potting shed and turned it inside out" and "...a sunroom beyond seemed an asylum for insane and injured furniture." Or the observation, "People take their hands with them, no matter where they go." The way she writes just makes me see things differently and it can be jarring in the best possible way.

Each story contains so much that it's sort of shocking when you think about it. The night I read the first story in the collection, "Something Amazing," I put the book down and marveled at how much happened in those 16 pages. I felt like I knew these people, everything about their lives, what has already happened and what hasn't even happened yet, and how does that all get crammed into 16 pages and still have room for such clever, vivid language? It's like her stories are bigger on the inside. They are the TARDISes of stories.

I can't really say enough to recommend this collection. Elizabeth McCracken has long been one of my favorite authors and she continues to prove her skill here. Even if you think you don't like short stories, I suggest you give these ones a shot. They are excellent.

The Giant's House : a review

The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken (1996)

This is one of my very favorite books and I just read it for the second time after buying a used copy. This means I can dog-ear the pages to mark my favorite passages. There are approximately 20 dog-ears in it already which I suppose renders the practice moot, but nonetheless I find it immensely satisfying.

I wrote almost nothing about it last time and while I still can’t do it justice, I will at least tell you a little about the plot. The narrator is a librarian on Cape Cod who meets and falls in love with a remarkable young man. He is a giant, growing quickly and unstoppably, doomed to die before his time from the condition. Peggy befriends him at the library and eventually becomes a more personal friend, finally becoming romantically involved, but rather too late.

The story is beautiful and sad and I love both Peggy and James. The first time I read this book, I think it was all about James for me but this time I thought much more about Peggy and her life. She was socially rather inept, romantically challenged, and didn’t really like people. But, despite the vast difference in their ages, for some reason she loved James. Of course their relationship was doomed and Peggy seemed to accept this, as she accepted the many unhappy circumstances of her life.

If you haven’t read this book yet, I urge you to do so now. In closing, I’ll leave you with this brief love poem that James wrote for Peggy:

Love Poem for a Librarian

Although her love for me is infinitesimal,
Her eyes are as Dewey as any old decimal.