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Loading... Run (2007)by Ann Patchett
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No current Talk conversations about this book. I agree with both the good reviews and the bad reviews for this novel. I think that is exactly what I liked about the book - I enjoyed it as fairytale, while at the same time really thought about all the issues it did not explore, or side-stepped; all the reactions and emotions that the characters weren't revealing; all the conversations that weren't had...this is life, after all: everything that we don't say to one another, that we are afraid to let outside of our thoughts, knowing we can't put them back once they are there. Whether the author intended this or not, the book made me think a lot harder about the characters than if they had behaved the way we would expect them to. ( ![]() This didn't go where I thought it might at the beginning. And this will contain plot spoilers. Doyle is Irish American and his wife, Bernadette, has just died when her sisters some round asking for the statue back for the family. Tradition has that it goes to the daughter most like the statue, and Doyle only has boys. Doyle refuses because his two youngest sons have it in their room, they think it is their mother. And then the story gets subverted. The boys are adopted and black. They are brothers, given up by their birth mother and taken on by Doyle and Bernadette, while he was the Mayor. The family story slowly unrolls and the family have several crises to get through. The turning point in the story comes when Doyle and the boys (now 20/21) attend a speech by Jesse Jackson. Tip determines to break away and as he tells his father, so he steps into the road and into the path of an oncoming car. He is pushed out of the way by a woman, Tennessee Moser. And we discover that she is Tip & Teddy's birth mother. Tennessee was with her daughter, Kenya, and the lives of Doyle and his sons will be intertwined with Tennessee and Kenya from here on. Told mostly over the space of a day with back story being filled in in places, this is a lovely discourse on the nature of family and what binds families together. There is clearly great love between the various men folk, be they ties of blood or not. Well written and imaginative but at the same time a little too perfect and predictable. A book club book When I mentioned on Facebook that I wanted to read an Ann Patchett book...everyone had a recommendation and NO ONE mentioned this one. I don't know if it's because it's an older one or what, but this was what was on the shelf at my library so I picked it up and I adored it so much. Maybe because I just lost my Mom, maybe because I was so close to my Dad and my brother is my best friend...but the way she wrote the relationships between these characters hit all of my emotional needs. The majority of the book takes place over the course of 24 hours but the relationship building felt as real as my own with my own family. I just adored this book. I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could. no reviews | add a review
"Engaging, surprising, provocative and moving...a thoroughly intelligent book, an intimate domestic drama that nonetheless deals with big issues touching us all: religion, race, class, politics and, above all else, family." -- Washington Post From New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett comes an engrossing story of one family on one fateful night in Boston where secrets are unlocked and new bonds are formed. Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving possessive and ambitions father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see is sons in politics, a dream the boys have never shared. But when an argument in a blinding New England snowstorm inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard Doyle cares about is his ability to keep his children--all his children--safe. Set over a period of twenty-four hours, Run takes us from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to a home for retired Catholic Priests in downtown Boston. It shows us how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include people you've never even met. As an in her bestselling novel, Bel Canto, Ann Patchett illustrates the humanity that connects disparate lives, weaving several stories into one surprising and endlessly moving narrative. Suspenseful and stunningly executed, Run is ultimately a novel about secrets, duty, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children. No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54 — Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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