Love and bowling

There were sawed-off limbs in every direction on the family tree.

Elizabeth McCracken, Bowlaway

Not since The Big Lebowski has bowling been such a delightful background to a wacky, totally unconventional story with endless surprises. I am speaking of Elizabeth McCracken's 2019 novel Bowlaway.

The novel covers decades, during which characters scatter like bowling pins. Some die in outrageous ways. One in a flood of molasses. Another from spontaneous combustion. Some disappear and come back. Others just disappear. Nobody hangs around long enough to become the main character, leaving that role, by default, to the bowling alley in Salford, Mass.

Bertha Truitt, whom McCracken describes as "a matron, jowly, bosomy, bottomy, odd," shows up prostrate one night  in the Salford cemetery, never explaining where she came from or how she got there. A young man named Joe Wear comes to her aid, as does a black doctor named Leviticus Sprague. For Bertha and Dr. Sprague, it is love at first sight. Or as the author describes Bertha's feelings, "She felt a plunk in the pond of her heart." They marry, have a daughter, Minna, and build a large house as odd as Bertha. And she builds a bowling alley.

Most of the story occurs in, around or at least about that bowling alley. Again to quote McCracken, "Our subject is love because our subject is bowling." The novel may not amount to a perfect game, yet still it offers as much fun as any game in any alley.