As one character observes about another, “the merriment was trained on a trellis of sorrow.” The same could be said of McCracken’s novel.Ī multigenerational family saga with a host of eccentric characters and a quirkily distinctive third-person narrative voice, “Bowlaway’’ opens at the turn of the 20th century in the cemetery of a small town north of Boston with the discovery of “a body. Intermittent humor mitigated the sting of death and disappointment in both, but in “Bowlaway,’’ wit is primary, exuberant, always abundantly blooming. McCracken is one of our finest chroniclers of grief: her 2014 short story collection, “Thunderstruck,’’ and her 2008 memoir about having a stillborn baby, “An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination,’’ were incandescent explorations of sorrow and the sorrowful.
Elizabeth McCracken’s first novel in 18 years, “Bowlaway,’’ is that most improbable of literary phenomena: a buoyant, joyful, rollicking yarn of
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