Run

Another Ann Patchett book that manages, through wonderful writing, to put you in the book, not just in your chair reading the book.
Many memorable scenes and passages, from the earliest pages (Doyle was tired. His grief was so fresh he hadn't begun to see the worst of it yet. He was still expecting his wife to come down the stairs and ask him if he felt like splitting an orange.) to the coming-to-the-end pages (With those few words, so true and therefore easily given, she all but fell down next to him on the couch in a swoon of happiness.)
I give it 4 stars instead of 5 only because it is a cold and snowy book, and also, I got to feeling like we'd NEVER get out of the hospital.

While slow in places, this is a very beautiful book, reminiscent in ways of Agee's A Death in the Family--not in terms of the story, but in the way it reveals so many characters. I love that Patchett doesn't resort to chapters headed by the characters' names but just shifts seamlessly through the hearts and minds of the different family members.

Kenya will be on my list of all-time favorite characters. What a beautifully written young girl with an amazing spirit.

Also, so many layers of maternal onion! At the end, it all comes full circle. Without spoilers, it is managed in a way that normally I'd find trite, but instead I was in tears. Patchett often makes me cry. Her exploration of family dynamics is exceptional (see The Dutch House). I show more love that Run is about Kenya, but also about them all: running for office, Uncle Sullivan in the hospital telling Teddy to run, etc. There's also an undercurrent of the idea of penance, which in Patchett's hands transcends religion and seems to be part and parcel of our ability to participate in humanity. show less

Doyle, the former mayor of Boston, and his wife Bernadette wanted a big family like the Irish Catholic one Bernadette was born into, but when they suffered infertility problems after having one son, they ended up adopting two small black boys. Then Bernadette died and Doyle was left alone with his sons, for whom he had ambitions they weren't necessarily inclined to go along with. Until, one snowy day many years later, an event happened that would change everything for them all: Tip, one of the sons, was nearly run over by a car, only to be saved when a strange woman pushed him out of the way.

I don't want to reveal too much more of what happens, but, honestly, no plot summary is remotely going to do this one justice. It's a wonderfully show more written, well-characterized, quietly thoughtful novel about family and the chance events that shape our lives and... well, about a lot of other things as well. But mostly about family.

This is the first thing of Patchett's that I've read, but it's definitely not going to be the last. I can see why she's so highly regarded. show less

This was a lovely book. It is made up of so many emotionally wringing parts - family, parenthood, relationships between siblings, parent's desires for their children, the reality of loss, fulfilling one's own dreams versus the dreams of one's parents, the need to be politically involved, race relations, and even more.

The story begins with the death of Bernadette, Doyle's wife. We learn than Doyle, a former mayor wants his two younger adopted sons, both black siblings who were taken into his white family, to make a career of politics. Neither Tip, the older one, wanted to do this because his love was ichthyology (the science of fishes) nor did Teddy, the younger son, because he wanted to go into the clergy. The story gets more show more complicated as we are introduced to Doyle's oldest son Sullivan and the birth mother of Tip and Teddy.

One of the things I most loved about this book was the tenderness the characters felt for each other. I think every family has its stresses, and it is comforting to see these stresses resolved when family members work hard at it.

My favorite chapter of this novel was the one in which Tennessee's dead friend comes to visit her in the hospital room. Those two had an especially lengthy and heartwarming conversation showing the depth of their friendship.

Ann Patchet has really suprised me. I didn't much care for her first novel Bel Canto which almost put me to sleep reading it. I then beca,e very intrigued with her novel State of Wonder. Since reading Run, I've definitely become a fan of her work and look forward to reading more of her novels in the future. show less

"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work." -- show more Woody Guthrie

I feel the same way about books. It's not that I necessarily require a "happy ending," but I generally do not care for books that leave the reader or the characters without hope, without redemption. That may be why I read mostly detective stories, where at least the bad are punished and quite often the good are rewarded. Now and again I read more serious fiction, and just yesterday when it seemed time to do so, I picked up the copy of [b:Run|242006|Running with Scissors A Memoir|Augusten Burroughs|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173051732s/242006.jpg|828773] that I found at the church book sale last December. I was hardly able to put it down.

The themes of the book include trans-racial adoption, the lives of the working poor, the inability of parents to control their children's lives, family, and the process by which young people decide their futures. Just the first of these, in lesser hands, might have made the book one of those "ripped-from-the-headlines" problem novels. Instead, Ann Patchett has crafted a book which is as absorbing as a detective story, and which I'll remember for a long time. The characters are far from flawless, but all of them are people of goodwill and in spite of their mistakes there is hope and redemption for all. Very highly recommended. show less

After trying for years to create a large family Bernadette and Bernard Doyle have only had one child. They decide to adopt two black boys, Tip and Teddy, to add to their small family of three. Then Bernadette dies and the newly widowed Bernard is left to raise his three young sons on his own. The book really kicks into gear when the two adopted sons are in college. One night a stranger shoves Tip out of the way of an oncoming car and he narrowly escapes disaster. This act forces the Doyle family’s world to intersect with the strangers in some unexpected ways.

The majority of the action takes place in a single 24 hour period, though it feels like a much longer stretch of time. Patchett really manages to develop each of her characters, show more allowing the reader to become invested in their lives. Out of everyone, Tip’s story really resonated with me the most. He’s intelligent and intense while his brother Teddy is endearing and easy to get along with.

This book was all about family to me. It questions what makes someone family and what you’re willing to do for family. It made me think about what creates the bonds between people and how experience or even coincidence sometimes makes strangers become family. It was interesting to read an interview with the author saying that to her the book was about politics. It’s fascinating that books manage to take on lives of their own after they’re written and can mean different things to each reader.

Side Note: If you’re looking for a Patchett book to start with, Bel Canto is my absolute favorite of hers. show less

The almost melodious writing style of Ann Patchett is, of course, this book's best feature. And, as I am coming to understand is typical Patchett, the story before the story truly brought me in: a stolen Virgin Mary statue, a question of what it means to be family, rife with sibling rivalry, single parenting and trans-racial adoption. That was a story that was full of potential.

And I really liked huge chunks of Run, but most of it felt just like that -- palpable potential resting underneath: the woman who claimed to be the birth mother, and was she or was she just a groupie and the creepy, loving way she stalked her biologic sons. The saintly, dying Catholic priest uncle, and the did he or didn't he actually have the power to heal the show more sick. The forgotten mayor of Boston, fading into obscurity, trying to live by proxy through his sons. The prodigal son, returned home, a murderer and a thief, but possibly a modern Robin Hood, with a heart of gold and a knack for saving children. The problem is that by shifting around between all of these stories, none of them were really ever given an opportunity to come into their own.

The ending came too quickly and, as I'm also beginning to realize is typical Patchett, with a completely unnecessary time jump that left way too much unexplored. I would read the heck out of a story about an ichthyologist turned doctor turned ichthyologist (goodness knows I'm one quarter-life crisis away from writing an autobiography about the topic) and Patchett played with a lot of interesting concepts about why people go into medicine in specific, and careers as a chance of penance in general, but it A) had nothing to do with the first 300 pages and B) she didn't exactly do the topic justice in the 10 pages she had to deal with it. It added little to the book.

I'm giving Ann Patchett's fiction one more chance before I resign myself to the idea that it was truly Lucy Grealy who made Truth & Beauty come alive. show less