The Run Of Yourself by Richard Ford, 2020
The magic trick:
A self-assured pace
I didn’t love where this story went plot-wise, but I really enjoyed reading it – if both things can be true. It’s a long story – probably one of the 20 longest I’ve read for the SSMT site. It’s not an exciting story. Definitely more of a “hang” than a page-turner. But Richard Ford writes so assuredly, never seemingly worried that the reader might bail if the pace doesn’t pick up. Instead, he layers specifics on specifics to create this world of Maine vacation home rentals. For me at least, I was content to spend time there. So I wasn’t bothered at all that the plot moved slowly. It was just nice to let the story take me to a new place.
And that’s quite a trick on Ford’s part.
The selection:
On the twentieth – the second anniversary of Mae’s death – Peter Boyce went down to the beach with his coffee, intending to read deeply into Mrs. Dalloway before the morning tide. He didn’t find Clarissa Dalloway intriguing; if he was supposed to. Petty and not particularly smart – even if not completely un-interesting to read about. He liked the once-handsome suitor, Peter Walsh better (not surprisingly), although he seemed to be a great narcissist. Clouds were lifting off the bay where there’d been grainy August fog before. A breeze had materialized. A single-hand lobsterman sat a quarter mile out in his skiff, his wife in the stern reading her own book. And farther- fourteen miles – Monhegan, its western cliffs in the sun.
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