Customer Reviews

Marathon, My Marathon

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The Foyt's highly entertaining and unique novel contains much which is laudable, they are to be commended on creating a scenario which draws the reader into an atmosphere of pervasive trepidation and tension. The Foyts write with a deadly directness and the narrative is an excellent example of great subtlety and simplicity allowing the life of the characters to become the life of the story. Tautness and control are abundantly evident as they handle the highs and the lows, the miseries and rewards, peculiar to the life of a long-distance runner; the inevitable fusing of the psyche into the rural landscape and the splendid isolation encountered by the lone marathon runner: "Triggered by her physical effort and the magnificent view, Cotton's endorphins, those natural brain-induced opiates, raced through her mind and her body, elevating her being into the phenomenon known as runner's high...Alas, Cotton's feelings of elation lasted only seconds. Her nirvana, arching into a fragile glow, diminished as she returned to earth to run in arduous reality." There are many examples of lovely, fluent descriptive prose: "A boundless ocean of land, its hills rising in massive gray-green swells, its white rock outcroppings cresting, flowed before Cotton's eyes as she drove her pick-up truck along the state highway east from El Paso." And the truly horrific and graphic account of Burley's heart attack at the wheel of his truck is brought off with remarkable aplomb and ingenuity: "Without warning a sharp pain stabbed deep within his hulk. A rupture had occurred at the junction of a coronary artery and feeder vessel. Like a hose in an unserviced engine hardened by wear and tear, the artery wall burst open. In response, Burley's body automatically shifted into a state of alert, and summoned his 911 rescue squad--the platelets in his blood stream, whose mission it was to patch things up..."

The Foyts have a great understanding of modern-day dilemmas and mid-life crises and this is manifest in their handling of the central characters, particularly Lawrence Masterson, who wakes up, age fifty, in the grip of a particularly oppressive mid-life crisis: "After all, why had he gone to college, prepared and disciplined himself for life in corporate America, done his best, applied himself one hundred per cent. Why? To be shown the door and told he is through? At age fifty?" There is a lovely analogy in the manuscript which clearly illustrates Masterson's pessimistic state of mind and mounting feelings of despondency: "Tumbleweeds were blowing across the highway...He remembered looking at it and thinking how much he and the tumbleweed had in common--no roots anymore, no place to go, each of them bouncing along in any wind that blew." Reading Marathon, My Marathon, one senses that the Foyts are committed environmentalists because there is much talk of green issues, but the narrative is never hi-jacked in any way by such talk. And if the promotion of such issues is a hidden agenda within, they should be applauded because their treatment of such discussions is even-handed and carefully researched. And indeed, we should never be allowed to forget that the calamitous denouement is entirely plausible. Marathon, My Marathon is a brilliantly conceived story, eloquently delivered, which entertains and stimulates and raises pertinent questions which demand to be addressed.

The Foyt's highly entertaining and unique novel contains much which is laudable, they are to be commended on creating a scenario which draws the reader into an atmosphere of pervasive trepidation and tension. The Foyts write with a deadly directness and the narrative is an excellent example of great subtlety and simplicity allowing the life of the characters to become the life of the story. Tautness and control are abundantly evident as they handle the highs and the lows, the miseries and rewards, peculiar to the life of a long-distance runner; the inevitable fusing of the psyche into the rural landscape and the splendid isolation encountered by the lone marathon runner: "Triggered by her physical effort and the magnificent view, Cotton's endorphins, those natural brain-induced opiates, raced through her mind and her body, elevating her being into the phenomenon known as runner's high...Alas, Cotton's feelings of elation lasted only seconds. Her nirvana, arching into a fragile glow, diminished as she returned to earth to run in arduous reality." There are many examples of lovely, fluent descriptive prose: "A boundless ocean of land, its hills rising in massive gray-green swells, its white rock outcroppings cresting, flowed before Cotton's eyes as she drove her pick-up truck along the state highway east from El Paso." And the truly horrific and graphic account of Burley's heart attack at the wheel of his truck is brought off with remarkable aplomb and ingenuity: "Without warning a sharp pain stabbed deep within his hulk. A rupture had occurred at the junction of a coronary artery and feeder vessel. Like a hose in an unserviced engine hardened by wear and tear, the artery wall burst open. In response, Burley's body automatically shifted into a state of alert, and summoned his 911 rescue squad--the platelets in his blood stream, whose mission it was to patch things up..."

The Foyts have a great understanding of modern-day dilemmas and mid-life crises and this is manifest in their handling of the central characters, particularly Lawrence Masterson, who wakes up, age fifty, in the grip of a particularly oppressive mid-life crisis: "After all, why had he gone to college, prepared and disciplined himself for life in corporate America, done his best, applied himself one hundred per cent. Why? To be shown the door and told he is through? At age fifty?" There is a lovely analogy in the manuscript which clearly illustrates Masterson's pessimistic state of mind and mounting feelings of despondency: "Tumbleweeds were blowing across the highway...He remembered looking at it and thinking how much he and the tumbleweed had in common--no roots anymore, no place to go, each of them bouncing along in any wind that blew." Reading Marathon, My Marathon, one senses that the Foyts are committed environmentalists because there is much talk of green issues, but the narrative is never hi-jacked in any way by such talk. And if the promotion of such issues is a hidden agenda within, they should be applauded because their treatment of such discussions is even-handed and carefully researched. And indeed, we should never be allowed to forget that the calamitous denouement is entirely plausible. Marathon, My Marathon is a brilliantly conceived story, eloquently delivered, which entertains and stimulates and raises pertinent questions which demand to be addressed.