The Memory of Running

Hey ho. I finished Ron McLarty's The Memory of Running this morning. In the good vein of most blogs in the world of blog, I'm gonna try and do a little book review for this post. so here it goes:

The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
Good ol' Smithy Ide the protagonist of this debut novel by Ron McLarty is the prototypical American suburban loser. He's in his forties, fat (actually, he's obscenely fat. man tits and enormous ass, he's got da works.) and drunk half the time. He has a day job at a suburban toy factory, making sure that the arms and legs of SEAL Sam go to their right places on Sam's torso. In his free time, he sits in front of his TV munching on pretzels and chugging beer. The book begins with a freak highway accident which claims the lives of both his parents, and the discovery of his long lost sister's death in faraway LA county (Smithy lives in Providence, Rhode Island). The sudden loss jolts Smithy off his couchbound ass into a journey across the vast country on a rusty old bicycle in a quest of sorts to reclaim his sister's remains. At its heart, The Memory of Running is Forrest Gump on a Beatnik Kerouac adventure. Smithy is absolutely endearing as that guy nobody really bothered about. The honest portrayal of his high-school insecurities are at once familiar and funny--scoring a date with one of the pretty girls for junior prom, only to find himself abandoned on prom night itself; trying to impress his sister's gorgeous psychiatrist with self-fashioned war stories (he got a Purple Heart because he was shot while peeing)--Smithy fumbles through his early life with a complete lack of finesse but with absolute self-awareness. As he gets older and slides into slobdom, his degeneration earns our heartfelt sympathy. The key to Smithy's salvation (as well as the book's affective-ness) is his unwavering loyalty and love for his psychologically unstable sister. In spite of her repeatedly vicious betrayals (though unintended), he never fails to manage their sibling relationship with surprising strength and patience. The weak link in the book (debut novels simply seem to always falter in some way or another) has to be the feeble love affair between Smithy and his crippled neighbor and childhood friend Norma. Norma's inclusion in the novel just pushes the novel across the line from subtly affecting personal redemption story into afternoon soap opera. If you can disregard all the chapters which wander into the Norma subplot, however, Smithy's bicycle ride from East to West and all the strange but funny and believable crazies with their own stories to tell that he meets along the way makes for an enjoyable lazy afternoon read. No brain teaser here, but this one will definitely make you laugh and even tug at your heartstrings while at it.