Bowlaway Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, The History of Bowling and our BookBrowse Review of Bowlaway.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Narrator describes Bertha as "the oddest combination of the future and the past anyone had ever met." What does it mean to be both future and past? What is your reaction to Bertha—how would you describe her?
2. An undercurrent of sadness exists in midst of the novel's humor and wackiness. More than one woman has lost a child, an echo from Elizabeth McCracken's own life, about which she has written in her 2008 memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.
   
   In this novel, LuEtta Mood, a Truitt's Alleys' patron, mourns a child: in the presence of another's baby, she is "a combustible gas, [and] the baby is a match… best to keep them apart." LuEtta fears she appears "dangerous and might never be allowed to hold anyone's baby again." Does McCracken's writing have resonance when it comes to someone you know (or yourself) who has experienced a tragedy of this magnitude?
3. LuEtta's own tragedy allows her to view Bertha's gaiety as "trained on a trellis of sorrow." What does she mean? Does her observation suggest that Bertha's exuberance is forced or inauthentic? Or does it mean that Bertha is truly able to live with joy, by somehow learning to put aside her sorrow?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Ecco. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.