ASquareClaire reviewed Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
Review of 'Memory of Running' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I think I read this book at exactly the right time. Refreshing, like taking a deep breath and a long exhale.
455 pages
English language
Published Nov. 14, 2005 by Charnwood.
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, especially Smithy's own, he's a loser. Then, within the span of one week, his beloved parents are killed in a car crash, and Smithy learns that his emotionally troubled, long-lost sister, Bethany, has turned up in a morgue in Los Angeles. Unmoored by the loss of his entire family - Smithy had always hoped Bethany might return - he rolls down the driveway of his parents' house on his old Raleigh bicycle into an epic journey that will take him clear across the country. As Smithy pedals across America - through New York City, St. Louis, Denver, and Phoenix, to name a few - he encounters humanity at its best and worst and begins to remember an early life that too many beers …
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, especially Smithy's own, he's a loser. Then, within the span of one week, his beloved parents are killed in a car crash, and Smithy learns that his emotionally troubled, long-lost sister, Bethany, has turned up in a morgue in Los Angeles. Unmoored by the loss of his entire family - Smithy had always hoped Bethany might return - he rolls down the driveway of his parents' house on his old Raleigh bicycle into an epic journey that will take him clear across the country. As Smithy pedals across America - through New York City, St. Louis, Denver, and Phoenix, to name a few - he encounters humanity at its best and worst and begins to remember an early life that too many beers have blotted out. The baseball games, the home-cooked meals, the soothing presence of his salt-of-the-earth parents; none of it could transform the dark truth of his sister's madness.
I think I read this book at exactly the right time. Refreshing, like taking a deep breath and a long exhale.