This Month's Selection: The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty

This month is the special Combined Book Club Potluck meeting, when Evening Readers and Afternoon Readers get together for supper and conversation. The Combined Book Club Potluck is Tuesday, August 20, at 6:00 p.m.

 

Bring a dish to share that night, or join us on the blog the next day!

 

This month's selection is The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty. Here's what some reviewers have said about this debut novel:

 

"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
"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

 

Click here to read an excerpt from The Memory of Running.

 

What We Thought: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

The evening’s discussion of Rules of Civility by Amor Towles was highlighted with a lovely assortment of refreshments tied to the theme of 1930s-era entertaining. Members served themselves from an overflowing bowl of non-alcoholic mint green punch reminiscent of gin drinks which the characters drank liberally throughout the book. Cookies and bar nuts accompanied drinks and put everyone in a jolly mood.

 

After much discussion it was decided that the book more or less accurately presented the time period of the 1930s and the effects of the Great Depression on different levels of social classes. Choices made by the characters and results affecting them were a major theme. The choices varied depending on the circumstances and morality of characters and determined the courses of their lives. Some choices were well-considered, especially by Katie who enjoyed a contented and successful life. Others, like Tinker, learned the hard way what can happen when choice is made without conscience. Eve, the character with the most spunk, was adventurous and spontaneous. She was admired by most, but not a model of propriety for anybody.

 

Some lives and careers were cut short by ill-considered and quickly made decisions. Did Eve ever contact her parents after leaving New York for home? We decided that the author left it unknown so readers would think about it.

 

The author has written a sequel, a novella about Eve (Eve in Hollywood) after her character leaves the story, but no one was very interested. One member commented that she thought of Eve as Jean Harlow. Members were reminded of their own youthful adventures and contrasted them with the wild and carefree antics of those in the story. All of the members enjoyed hearing about high times at dances and nightclubs on and off the Cape. When asked who would recommend this book to a friend, all raised their hands. 

Favorite Quotes

“In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions -- we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.”

“How rich does one have to be to buy a very handsome man?”

From Rules of Civility by George Washington: “Never bring a fork to your mouth when you have a knife in your hand.”  

This Month's Selection: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

Set in New York City in 1938, Rules of Civility tells the story of a watershed year in the life of an uncompromising twenty-five-year- old named Katey Kontent. Armed with little more than a formidable intellect, a bracing wit, and her own brand of cool nerve, Katey embarks on a journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool through the upper echelons of New York society in search of a brighter future.

The story opens on New Year's Eve in a Greenwich Village jazz bar, where Katey and her boardinghouse roommate Eve happen to meet Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a ready smile. This chance encounter and its startling consequences cast Katey off her current course, but end up providing her unexpected access to the rarified offices of Conde Nast and a glittering new social circle. Befriended in turn by a shy, principled multimillionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, and a single-minded widow who is ahead of her times, Katey has the chance to experience first hand the poise secured by wealth and station, but also the aspirations, envy, disloyalty, and desires that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her orbit, she will learn how individual choices become the means by which life crystallizes loss.

 

Read along with the Evening Readers and comment here any time!