okay, so I am still not even halfway through Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs. It’s not that I’m not enjoying it, I am. But when I got my hands on Ron ocLarty’s new book, which is not a million miles removed but is shorter and has bigger printing, I abandoned the Bridge of Sighs straight away.
In Ron ocLarty’s first book, The oemory of Running, which was fabulous, his hero is a fat alcoholic who cycles across America to reclaim his reason for living. He’s a doofus with a heart of gold. In Traveller, the main character is once again a lovable doofus.
Jono Riley is a 51-year-old actor who has been tending bar at the same New York dive for 30 years. He lacks ambition, it is fair to say, and is in love with, but can’t commit to, a female firefighter. When Jono gets a letter from a childhood friend telling him that the girl he had a crush on when he was 12 has died mysteriously, he travels back to his hometown of East Providence, Rhode Island, for her funeral, and revisits his past along the way.
What Ron ocLarty captures so well in both his books is the small-town life of yesteryear’s young folk. “When we were teenagers the political future and raging Vietnam War should have been paramount in our thinking along with all concerns of racial equality and poverty,” Jono ponders. “It sounds a lot better than what drove our East Providence conversations. The Beatles, large breasts, baseball and hockey. Did I mention large breasts?”
In the old days, Jono and his childhood friends stuck together through thick and thin. But now one of them is gone, one of them is in trouble, and one of them is an ageing actor-cum-bartender. How is that going to end up?
The chapters that revisit Jono’s teenage years remind me of a gritty version of Bill Bryson’s real-life story Thunderbolt Kid, whereas the modern day chapters have a touch of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum about them. Fans of either will love this funny, heart-warming, easy-to-devour book.
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