THE MEMORY OF RUNNING by RON McLARTY (2004)

I could cite many reasons not to like this novel, and yet I liked it anyway -- very much.

The "hero" is a 40-something, overweight, alcohol guzzling, chain smoking looser who spends his days at a low level assembly line job and his nights in a bar drinking and watching TV. He doesn't have a girl friend; in fact, he has no friends at all. Then his parents are both killed in an automobile accident and in the very same week he learns that his long-lost sister has also died. Talk about a falling-down life. It's hard to imagine this man as the central character in a novel.

Then he impulsively jumps on his childhood bicycle and embarks on a cross-country ride from Rhode Island to California to claim his sister's body. Along the way, he meets many unusual people -- some who help him and some who try to kill him. Some of these encounters, but not all, are humorous. All are a bit unbelievable.

But most unbelievable of all is the fact that a grossly overweight man could manage to ride even ten miles, especially on a decades-old one-speed bike. Or that a junk-food glutton, drunkard, and heavy smoker could give up all his addictions cold turkey with no problem. The reader must suspend disbelief and go with the flow or perceive the journey as metaphorical.

Along the way our hero also finds himself, or rather, the person he used to be before the stresses of a dysfunctional family and a schizophrenic sister changed him.

So I was able to ignore all the lapses in logic in the plot and the annoying habits of the hero, and feel the warmth and sympathy that the author has for his character. Life is hard, for some harder than for others, and sometimes it defeats us, but not always.