Elizabeth McCracken's Bowlaway: Love, Geneaology, and Candlepin Bowling

The following excerpts are taken from a long-form review of Bowlaway and interview with Elizabeth McCracken, both of which ran in the October 24th, 2018 issue of Shelf Awareness' Maximum Shelf. Bowlaway is on sale now wherever books are sold (and was one of the best books I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing in 2018). Excerpts reprinted here with permission.

It can be hard, in a world with so very many books, to find something truly unique to write about. But Elizabeth McCracken (Thunderstruck, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination) has done just that in Bowlaway, a sweeping family saga centered on a bowling alley. And not just any old bowling alley, but a candlepin bowling alley, and not just any old story, but a love story. "Our subject is love," writes McCracken early in the novel, "because our subject is bowling. Candlepin bowling. This is New England, and even the violence is cunning and subtle."

This sets the tone for the rest of the tale, which is itself cunning and subtle, a carefully woven and darkly humorous account of one woman, Bertha Truitt, and the strange and lasting legacy of her fascinating and too-short life.

Book Review: Buying In, by Laura Hemphill

When Sophie Landgraf graduates from college in 2008 with a degree in applied math (smartypants), she scores a fast-paced, high-power job working on Wall Street as an analyst. Or so she thought, anyway. The pace is fast, of course, but the high-power job she yearns for remains just out of reach, as her advice is overlooked and her presence not wanted at client meetings. She sticks with it, though, working such long hours that her personal life suffers, pushing for the job she wants rather than just the job she has.

When her firm spots a potential merger in the works, Sophie hits it off with the client and suddenly finds herself in the position she's always dreamed of. But the credit crisis is looming, and Sophie's not sure who to trust or to turn to in her new shiny life; in order to succeed, she has to decide just how far she wants to go--how much she wants to buy in--before she can sell out.

Buying In can, occasionally, get bogged down in financial details that would probably be more interesting to anyone who's worked in finance, and some of the secondary characters--like Sophie's father, and her best friend from high school--seem half-formed and out of place in Sophie's story. But if you're willing to look past this, the story is, at its heart, an interesting one, asking tough questions about careers, life, and what we will do to reach our goals. Not everyone will agree with Sophie's decisions, but the beauty is that they are her decisions. She can decide, as a recent college grad, how much she wants to dedicate to her job; as a woman, how much she wants to fight for recognition; as an individual, how much her job will define her personality or vice versa. Each and every one of us will approach these questions differently, but, like Sophie, they are questions we will ultimately have to answer.

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This review is part of the TLC book tour for Buying In. Check out what others thought about the book.

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Note: Thanks to the publisher for providing an e-galley of this title for review.

Buying In | Laura Hemphill | New Harvest | November 2013 | Hardcover | 304 pages