The Memory of Running
Ron McLarty
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Viking Adult
ISBN: 0670033634

Smithson Ide is alone, 43 & weighs in at 279 pounds when his parents die in a car crash.

Smithy was a tall, skinny kid who was always running everywhere. While a few logs shy of a cord, he has a distinctly unencumbered, authentic philosophy about life & people. Then the Draft whisked him off to Vietnam, & instead of joining his supply unit, he was shuffled into the war zone, given a gun, ordered to march into the jungle where he took a leak in the wrong place at the wrong time, & ended up with 27 bullet holes & a Purple Heart.

All his life, Smithy's beautiful older sister had been afflicted with voices that enticed her to do bizarre things, go to strange places. During his boyhood, Smithy's family became experts in hunting for her when she disappeared; at first trying to take care of her at home, & later driving her back, again & again, to the local mental hospital & the doctors there, hoping they'd help, & getting none. There were many periods, however, when his sister was well & Smithy's young life was perfect.

All his life, Nora & her Mom had lived next door. She was younger than he & adored him. His parents loved Nora, especially his Dad, who played baseball in a minor league, & she'd join them for dinner, at the games & in arguing about competing teams. Nora was a whirlwind of energy, a real pest. Then she got hit by a car & had to live in a wheelchair. For some reason Smithy's never understood, she stayed home &... well... he forgot about her, what with 27 bullet holes, a Purple Heart & the years it took to recover, his sister's episodes & his job in the toy factory checking how many arms & legs the GI Joe dolls had.

Then his sister miraculously found someone to love her & his elated family anticipated the approaching wedding. During her honeymoon she simply walked out one day, never to return, never to be found, although there were occasional “sightings” of her. When someone scornfully remarked about him still living at home with his parents, he felt he ought to move out on his own. In his soulless apartment he forgot to run, ate & ate away his loneliness & became stagnant with the overwhelming struggle to keep body & soul together at his job & in his empty home.

Smithy's sad life rolled on for 20 forgettable years, until the fateful day his parents' car crashes. First his Mom dies of her injuries & then his Dad. Newly orphaned Smithy must now take care of his parents' papers. That's when he discovers a recent letter from a Los Angeles coroner, saying that a body there had been identified as his sister's, & asking what should be done with it. That's when he realizes his Dad had never given up searching.

Lost in memories of his childhood & his beautiful sister, Smithy wanders into his Dad's garage, & finds his beloved Raleigh bicycle where his Dad had hung it, the day Smithy left for boot camp.

Then he sees Nora out in the drive in her wheelchair. She's angry & weeping at the loss of his parents. Too many years have passed since they were kids, since they'd spent some part of every day together, still Smithy takes her telephone number, tucking the scrap of paper away in his pocket next to the coroner's letter. Then he promptly forgets about her as he wheels his Raleigh to the nearest gas station to put air in its tires.

That evening, Smithy bicycles to his old fishing hole at the reservoir, & exhausted from all the exercise, falls asleep under the stars. The next morning he simply sets out to answer that letter from the West Coast. With only the simplest of maps from a gas station, a bunch of bananas & a water bottle, this orphan in a huge, out-of-shape body pedals toward the sunset in search of his life.

Along the way he starts calling Nora, & as they reconnect, she follows his course, sends him money, makes calls to his work & listens to his adventures of seeing the land he's riding through & meeting all the mean & kind people.

As Smithy pedals west from East Providence, Rhode Island, he remembers his sister's progress into schizophrenia, the kids who mistreated her & him, the misadventures her illness tumbled them into, the doctors who didn't know what was wrong, who bought her fantastic stories &, what is just as important, how he got to be 43, all alone, enormously fat, & desperately unhappy with no one to love.

If you liked Forrest Gump, I urge you to read The Memory of Running because it's an exceptionally well-written story of a man stuck in time, who unwittingly takes on a quest to find himself, regain his health & open up to love.

I highly recommend The Memory of Running, it rang all my bells! It's not sappy or sentimental yet it tugs at your heart strings as you watch a person unraveling the shackles that had bound him into an empty life, until you're rooting for the fat boy as he pedals away the pounds & sheds the cocoon he's worn to numb his pain. I was infuriated, excited & entranced!

I'm so glad this hopeful & memorable saga of a sad son's trek in search of his life, published in 1995, & recorded in 2000 by the author, is again available. I listened to the taped version although it's also on CD.

Ron McLarty has written plays, acted on stage & tv -- as a judge in the Law & Order series, in films, as well as narrated many of Recorded Books' bestsellers.
(06/18/06)

Rebecca