The Memory of Running » (Reprint)

Ron McLarty was enjoying his life as a character actor (Sex and the City and The Practice are on his resume) and writing just for fun, when Stephen King made him famous. In his Entertainment Weekly column, King praised McLarty's The Memory of Running -- then only available as an audiobook -- as "The Best Book You Can't Read."

Every decade seems to produce a novel that captures the public’s imagination with a story that sweeps readers up and takes them on a thrilling, unforgettable ride. Ron McLarty’s The Memory of Running is this decade’s novel. By all accounts, especially his own, Smithson “Smithy” Ide is a loser. An overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk, Smithy’s life becomes completely unhinged when he loses his parents and long-lost sister within the span of one week. Rolling down the driveway of his parents’ house in Rhode Island on his old Raleigh bicycle to escape his grief, the emotionally bereft Smithy embarks on an epic, hilarious, luminous, and extraordinary journey of discovery and redemption. “Smithy is an American original, worthy of a place on the shelf just below your Hucks, your Holdens, your Yossarians.” —Stephen King “Endearing . . . it’s a ride worth taking.” —USA Today “In The Memory of Running, professional actor and long aspiring novelist Ron McLarty has invented a character so fully and elegantly defined that the book soars with originality and life.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Captivating . . . McLarty unspools passage after passage of devastating grace and melancholy, and his taciturn hero hooks himself to your heart.” —Entertainment Weekly

The Washington Post - John McNally

… the novel will doubtless find a wide audience, in large part because Smithy Ide is a character readers will root for. They'll root for him because Ron McLarty clearly loves him. My only hope for McLarty's next novel is that all of his characters, small and large, earn that love.