Product Description

Smithson Ide's life so far has led him nowhere. He's 43 years old, weighs 279 pounds, and keeps himself numb with food and alcohol. His only emotional ties are to his parents and to the memory of his older sister, Bethany, who has been missing for 20 years. Then his parents die in a car crash and he learns of Bethany's death in LA County. Suddenly there isn't enough beer in the world to keep Smithy from his feelings. Drunk and bereft, he takes his old Raleigh bicycle and starts cycling. Once he starts, he can't stop and then he's riding across America to recover his sister. Along the way he meets all sorts of people who help or hinder him. He hears the confession of a priest, he rescues a boy from a snow storm, he has a gun pointed in his face, he's hit by a truck and helps a man dying of AIDS. Smithy's ride is an extraordinary quest, to rediscover the past and memories of Bethany, but it's also his journey back to life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #412336 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

Review
'Smithy Ide is one of the sweetest, most endearing losers in literature' Philadelphia Inquirer 'Smithy is an American original, worthy of a place on the shelf just below your Hucks, your Holdens and your Yossarians...This is a book that can do more than walk; it has a chance to be a break-out bestseller...It's big-hearted and as satisfying as one of your mom's home-cooked Sunday dinners' Stephen King 'Riders who hop onto the back of Smithy Ide's bike and ride America with him will cherish the journey. I loved this sad, funny, life-affirming novel' Wally Lamb.

Carole Matthews
'Very funny. Very heart-warming'

Jane Wenham Jones
'Warm and wonderfully witty'

Customer Reviews

Superb
This superb piece of story-telling richly deserves a five -star rating. Smithy Ide's story -- both running away from and running to something -- is told in beautiful, simple prose that entices the reader further into the book from the very first page. And everything that develops from there makes the book beter and better as you go in. Smithy is a wonderful creation: unsophisticated but wise; knowing but uncorrupt; imperfect but good.(Forget the allusion to Forrest Gump -- he has none of the treacly stupidity of that character -- but is more like a mellowed Holden from Catcher in the Rye, as befits a forty-three year old narrator).

This is one of those books -- simple in construction, unsophisticated in its language -- that shifts your view of your own world by drawing you into the perspective of a slightly different one.

A fat man rediscovers his soul
I am finding it difficult to review this book without gushing. I thought it was just beautiful. A man named Smithson Ide has responded to tragedy by anaesthetising himself with alcohol and food. His parents die in a car accident and he receives confirmation of the death of his missing sister; he responds by getting on his bike for the first time since he was a boy... This becomes a quest as he allows himself to feel, and love, again. As he travels further from home, he rebuilds the affection he had for his disabled neighbour, Norma, reflects upon his sister's madness and the impact on his family. Well, that all sounds rather depressing, and it is sad, but his tentative steps towards becoming human again are immensely moving and life-affirming. He's a simple man but beautifully written and real - he doesn't intellectualise his misfortune and it is Norma's wisdom that articulates his emotional journey. It is, of course, the usual story of having to travel to understand what you have at home but pacey and wonderfully written.

Spellbinding
The Memory of Running has at its very core a simple idea and an old fashioned theme- that of the life changing journey or coming of age experience. But its simplicity is also its great strength because the emotional journey that we, the readers, will also take will resonante long after you have finished with Smithy Ide. Smithy ceases to be a fictional construct as soon as we begin to recognise traces of ourselves in his personality, and trust me, there's a lot of us in him, almost too much to bare. The emotional journey with its vivid flashbacks and cliff hanging narrative, will keep the pages turning and the emotions on the boil. Nobody ever wins at everything, and some people seem never to win at all, but it's what we have around us, the things we take for granted, that hold the most value and shape the people we actually become, and Smithy Ide will teach you this and more. If we dared to scratch the surface of our true and deepest emotions we could only hope to become as liberated and loving as Smithy. I dare'nt give anything of the plot away as it will spoil the treat you have in store if you haven't yet journeyed with Smithy and shared his heartache and his enormous capacity for life and the power of his love for his sister who haunts the novel at every turn.
Despite the title you wont need a pair of trainers but a comfy bike and a box of tissues to follow Smithy. Prepare to laugh and be amazed, but most of all be prepared to see something of your self in this overweight, smoking, drinking and seemingly sad middle age man. Smithy ends up far richer by the end of his experience and so will you for joining him.