The Memory of Running
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punkpenguin, Heather, and moon_lemming.
Book Details
Written by Ron McLarty.
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($24.95)
Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
Once in a great while, a story comes along that has everything: plot, setting, and, most important of all, the kind of characters that sweep readers up and take them on a thrilling, unforgettable ride. Well, get ready for Ron McLarty’s The Memory of Running because, as Stephen King wrote in Entertainment Weekly (Stephen King’s “The Pop of King” column for Entertainment Weekly), “Smithy is an American original, worthy of a place on the shelf just below your Hucks, your Holdens, your Yossarians.”Meet Smithson “Smithy” Ide, an overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk who works as a quality control inspector at a toy action-figure factory in Rhode Island. By all accounts, including Smithy’s own, he’s a loser. But when Smithy’s life of quiet desperation is brutally interrupted by tragedy, he stumbles across his old Raleigh bicycle and impulsively sets off on an epic journey that might give him one last chance to become the person he always wanted to be. As he pedals across America—with stops in New York City, St. Louis, Denver, and Phoenix, to name a few—he encounters humanity at its best and worst and adventures that are by turns hilarious, luminous, and extraordinary. Along the way, Smithy falls in love and back into life.
McLarty’s novel has already received significant attention for its unusual genesis as an audiobook. Now, in a major publishing event, Viking heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction with his stunning debut, The Memory of Running.
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Fence thinks this book is Nothing Special.
This is an odd book. On the one hand I quite enjoyed it while reading it, but it never mde for compelling reading, and I often put off reading it in favour of doing anything else. Maybe it is because I didn’t really get the narrator, Smithy Ide, I’m not sure what it was about him, but I didn’t like him all that much. I didn’t dislike him either, I was merely a bit meh about him.
Also the style of the book took a while to get used to. Short chapters flicking back to Smithy’s past. He loses his parents suddenly in a car crash, and then discovers that his older sister, Bethany, is dead. In a drunken state he finds his old Raleigh, and goes for a cycle. And then seems unable to stop.
As he pedals across America he meets many interesting people. Some who help him, some who distrust him. Some who even shoot him. Through it all his backstory, and that of his sister is revealed.
Bethany was a beautiful girl, and it is obvious that Smithy loved her, but he also hated her a little. For she had a voice, a voice that would tell her to do things and she couldn’t but listen. To be very blunt she was crazy.
Sometimes she would strike a pose, and remain, unmoving, totally still for as long as possible. Other times she would be violent to herself, scratching her face and pulling her hair out. Sometimes she would say hateful things, and sometimes she’d just disapear. Then the whole family would set out looking for her. Smithy running or biking everywhere as he tried to find her and bring her home. But then he grew older, went to Vietnam, came back and started drinking and sitting around doing nothing more and more. He stopped being a runner, and began to put on weight. Until he became the fat, friendless 43 year old drunk he is at the start of the novel.
In essence I suppose this is a road trip novel, a story about a man “on a questâ€. Although he isn’t sure what he is looking for.
As I said, I did enjoy it, but I don’t think I’d really recommend it. I found it too easy to ignore, and while on occasion there are some nice lines, and interesting sentences, I was never really engaged in the story.
I know it sounds stupid, but they were smells with muscles.
In a way I suppose I found it a little simplistic. Smithy is left alone by the death of parents, in shock he goes for a bike ride and keeps on biking. That is it. Although it isn’t really. His cycle is his way of finding himself, of coming to peace with the past and the darkness of his sister’s madness.
I guess I’m more than a little ambivalent about this one.