A review by cmarie1665
Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken

2.0

This book just started to fall apart for me around page 50. I think it would have been a really good short story. The characters felt unbelievable, their actions left unexplained, or explained with some pat sounding interesting sounding description that sort of worked for a moment, but not when you stopped to think about it. I just stopped caring about the characters and also about the plot, or the language, or the setting. So there was just nothing to care about. I'm not trying to be mean about it. It just didn't work for me. It felt like really interesting clothes on a mannequin that was just falling apart. The character's eccentricities, which were so lovingly and interestingly described, weren't enough for me to stay interested. I needed more meat, more stable characterization.
I really loved An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, (perhaps because I have some personal experience with perinatal traumatic grief) and A Giant's House, so I was disappointed with this book. I wonder if maybe it started out as a collection of linked short stories, and then was perhaps expanded without a lot of meat to hang on the bones?