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Bowlaway
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
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Publisher's summary
A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alley.
From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the 20th century - nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and 15 pounds of gold on her person - Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark - with Bertha its most notable resident.
When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon, it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha’s defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills.
In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of 20th-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family’s myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that divide.
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- A Novel
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- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 16 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The Bahamas, 1941. Newly widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the duke and duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Or so Lulu imagines.
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Stick with it!
- By Colleen on 07-17-19
By: Beatriz Williams
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Belle Cora
- A Novel
- By: Phillip Margulies
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat, Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 25 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In the home where Arabella Godwin was raised it is forbidden to speak her name, and her picture is turned to the wall. But in the turbulent America of the 1850s, everyone knows her as "Belle Cora", madam of San Francisco's finest bordello. Judges and senators do her bidding; a vicious newspaper editor plots her downfall; a preacher looks at her from across his pulpit and tries to forget that once she was his wife. Merchant's daughter, farm girl, prostitute, mother - the only thing that never changes is her tireless pursuit of the one man who can see her for who she really is.
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excellent
- By Patricia on 05-15-20
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Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
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The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted
- By: Robert Hillman
- Narrated by: Daniel Lapaine
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1968 in rural Australia and lonely Tom Hope can't make heads or tails of Hannah Babel. Newly arrived from Hungary, Hannah is unlike anyone he's ever met - she's passionate, artistic, and fiercely determined to open sleepy Hometown's first bookshop. Despite the fact that Tom has only read only one book in his life, the two soon discover an astonishing spark. Recently abandoned by an unfaithful wife - and still missing her sweet son, Peter - Tom dares to believe that he might make Hannah happy.
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Listener beware
- By Little old lady from Iowa on 06-11-23
By: Robert Hillman
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The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
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The Godmothers
- A Novel
- By: Camille Aubray
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet the Godmothers: Filomena is a clever and resourceful war refugee with a childhood secret, who comes to America to wed Mario, the family's favored son. Amie, a beautiful and dreamy French girl from upstate New York, escapes an abusive husband after falling in love with Johnny, the oldest of the brothers. Lucy, a tough-as-nails Irish nurse, ran away from a strict girls' home and marries Frankie, the sensuous middle son. And the glamorous Petrina, the family's only daughter, graduates with honors from Barnard College despite a past trauma that nearly caused a family scandal.
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Easy Enjoyable Read
- By Bunny on 06-23-21
By: Camille Aubray
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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The Folded Leaf
- By: William Maxwell
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is a classic novel from one of our most honored writers - the author of such acclaimed works as So Long, See You Tomorrow and All the Days and Nights. The Folded Leaf is the serenely observed yet deeply moving story of two boys finding one another in the Midwest of the 1920s, when childhood lasted longer than it does today and even adults were more innocent of what life could bring.
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Midwestern Misfits
- By David on 03-17-15
By: William Maxwell
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The Magician of Lublin
- By: Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Narrated by: Larry Keith
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The Magician can dazzle the crowds with his sleight of hand, climb to any height, open any lock. Fearlessly, he does death-defying tricks in theaters all over Poland. At home, his sweet Jewish wife waits for him to return from the city. In the city, his adoring mistresses wait for him to return from home. He holds the key to all hearts, but his own is beset with confusion.
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Complex Masterpiece
- By Evan on 09-11-08
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The Parisian
- By: Isabella Hammad
- Narrated by: Fiona Button
- Length: 20 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.
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Overly ambitious
- By Placeholder on 06-16-19
By: Isabella Hammad
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Everything Is Illuminated
- By: Jonathan Safran Foer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man—also named Jonathan Safran Foer—sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.
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Astounding reading
- By bookworm123abc on 02-10-23
What listeners say about Bowlaway
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- SKS
- 04-01-19
An epically poetic family narrative...
Candlepin bowling set to poetry in a fantastical New England setting...McCracken's wordsmittery when wound up in Reading's warm yet matter of factual delivery definitely had me hitting the back back button several times. Many passages of this tale lean much more toward the poetic and are lovely to listen to. Admittedly, the meandering and epic nature of the story had me wondering at its well, "weirdness." Overall I enjoyed the characters offered up at the outset, but found some of their progeny to be less interesting, with the offshoot narratives dragging some for me. The choice of oddly-paired wording and the colorful matriarch of the story, Bertha Truitt, carried me through however.
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2 people found this helpful
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- M.C.
- 06-27-19
Good writer-
So strange to listen to a book by a very good writer but not to care a wit about most of the characters in the story. To me, the story had great potential that wasn’t realized due to lack of empathy for the characters.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Joel
- 04-12-19
Very Disappointing
I gave up on this about 9 hours into the almost 13 hour book. I NEVER do that, but I was actually getting more and more irritated each day that I listened to this on my daily commute. Look at the reviews of this book on Goodreads before you purchase it. I wish I had!
I thought the book had promise in the first couple hours but then it becomes more and more of a rambling and pointless mess with each chapter. The narrator is fine but the story is really bad.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Megan
- 03-22-21
A quirky saga
Once you let go of there being a normal plot you can really enjoy the stories of this vast array of quirky characters. This is not a light read. It’s fit more for an English class.
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- risinggr
- 12-29-19
quirky characters do not a story make
I couldn't wait for this book to be over. McCracken is obviously a pantser with an eye for detail and description. Her characters are intriguing and you don't know what is going to happen next. There's a touch of magical realism about how the main character arrives, but that is undercut later in the book when her ex-husband shows up. Also, since the characters are too quirky to relate to, I didn't care what happened to them. Deaths were arbitrary and even amusing but lacking in impact. One character's possible role in a death is resolved with introducing a new character which also explains an oddity of the main character. The heir of the bowling alley seems to be accepted without the most rudimentary investigation (birth certificate.) So many plot threads are introduced but not really explored in any depth: interracial marriage, toxic grief (off stage spontaneous combustion), handicapped characters, orphans or abandoned children, etc. I suppose in life these things are among us and we don't get a view into their impact, but the writer's distance from the characters and the many plot threads dilute any impact as well.
Is there a point to all this meandering storyline?
As I said, I couldn't wait for this book to end, which it fizzles to finally.
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- Dawn
- 03-12-19
Terrible! Weird! Waste of time and money!
Weird, couldn’t follow one character! I’m still not sure what this book was about...don’t waste a precious credit!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Sheila
- 06-19-19
Quirky tale of a legacy of an eccentric.
This somewhat rambling tale is populated by an entertaining collection of eccentric people, who seem to be thrown into each other's lives by a candlepin bowling alley! Expect it to be a little confusing. Towards the last quarter of the book, it becomes quite humorous and lively, which I wish it had been from the start. Don't expect to like the characters either! What I liked about the book was the imaginative storytelling and details such as the eight sided house, the molasses flood (a real event) the odd doll carved out of bowling pins and other details that I don't want to give away.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Aw
- 03-01-20
Started strong
The story fizzled after the primary character died, far too soon in the novel. The remaining characters had no redeeming qualities whatsoever,and though the writing was really good, the story just fell flat.
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- Donna J. Kimpton
- 04-03-19
Fantastic multigenerational story
it was wonderful. Fascinating story with many plot surprises. loved the ending. Not one character left unfinished
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1 person found this helpful
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- Oaklander
- 02-23-19
Best Novel of 2019/Best Narration by Kate Reading!
Dickens meets Updike meets the inimitable Elizabeth McCracken. All of her books are joyous and her memoir was piercing but Bowlaway proves that she has only gotten better. This is a genealogy of a family -- the Truitts -- with a variety of ghosts and wonderful happenings. A delicious story that HOOKS you and Kate Reading brings it to life in magical and perfect ways, as always. McCracken is a genius and we are the beneficiary. I never want it to end.
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10 people found this helpful