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2005-04-03 - 00:26

The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty

�The Longer you wait and put off the nice things you should do on a regular basis, the harder it is to do them, until finally you have to force yourself to be nice, to be thoughtful and it isn�t easy because you�re embarrassed about not having done those easy, nice things in a natural kind of way.� --The Memory of Running

I can dig that. Like, when you forget someone�s birthday and then you have to send them a card that says you messed up and forgot. But, even then you only have a short window of opportunity to remember before you�re just a bad friend. Its always easier to assume people know how you feel than it is to come up with the words to express your feelings.

Kat S. fell in love with the book so when it came time to toss book titles into a hat to pick which book we�d read for this month�s group we didn�t even have to ask. �You�ll love it,� She said. �Every chapter is life changing. You�ll just love it.� Well, no fluffy fiction after the serious The Children�s Blizzard. I picked this book up sneered at it. What if I don�t want anything life changing?

The Memory of Running begins with a car smashing into a concrete divider and ending the lives of Smithson Ide�s parents. Well, if I�d had any doubts about whether I�d make it through the first chapter they had all been laid to rest. Both of my parents are still alive and the thought of losing them in such a sudden and traumatic way is beyond my comprehension. I had to see how Smithy, a forty something fat man, would deal. He does what every good son would do, makes funeral arrangements. And, if the death of his parents wasn�t enough, sifting through his father�s mail Smithy comes across a letter from the L.A. coroner. His sister who had been missing for twenty-some years had been found. We�re sorry to inform you of this, but what would you like done with the body? Ouch. This book is tragic. Its one sad thing after another in a successive line of misery that leads Smithy across the country on his bike. Yes, that�s right, his bike.

The book alternates between past and present; the closer Smithy gets to his destination the further he goes into his memory. As we�re given the details of the trek across America, we�re also given the dirt on the events that lead to his sister�s disappearance. I found Smithy to be realistically sketched. He�s a man with his problems, some of which he�s not dealt with very well. I can relate to that. For the most part, I found the people Smithy encounters to be pretty realistic as well, although the descriptions of the past were a bit more vivid.

Ron McLarty�s writing style was choppy in places. His use of sentence fragments was irritating. They were the sort of thing that belongs in conversation and not on the page. I found them distracting, although they could have been intended to give the novel a casual feel. Smithson Ide is a man without pretext, so his storytelling wouldn�t be polished. And, I liked Smithy enough as a character that even when I was distracted by the presentation, and trudged on through the narrative.

I found this book to be enjoyable, all the way up to and including its abrupt ending. I wouldn�t say life changing, but it certainly gave me a lot to think about. Sure �nuf.




Next Month: Smashed

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