Run
- Authors: Ann Patchett
- Series:
- Type: Novel
- Genres: General Fiction
- Rank:
- Rating: 4.4 based on 7,654 reviews
- Release Date: September 25, 2007
- Print length: 304 pages (Hardcover)
About the book
It is just a few weeks after Christmas, and the unforgiving New England weather has taken a turn for the worse. Doyle has dragged his reluctant sons, Tip and Teddy, to a speech by Jesse Jackson. Though his own political career is over, dealt a fatal blow by a family scandal, Doyle is still fired by Jackson's rhetoric and perplexed by his sons' indifference. The two boys, both adopted, are close enough in age to be taken for twins, but in character they couldn't be more different. Teddy - open, affectionate, the gentle dreamer - thinks he has found his calling in the Catholic Church. The elder by a year, Tip is more serious, reserving his own passionate interest for ichthyology: he is happiest alone in the warmth of his lab, labelling and categorising fish specimens. When they are involved in a violent accident in the treacherously icy road, the Doyles are forced for the first time to confront certain truths: about how the death of Bernadette, Doyle's beloved wife, has affected the family, and about the anonymous figure, never discussed, who is the boys' real mother. Full of warmth and humanity and singing, graceful prose, "Run" is a moving story about our fragile hopes and fears for our children and the lengths we will go to to protect our families. It is a stunning new novel from the prizewinning author of Bel Canto.
Praise for Run
Ann Patchett serves up an emotionally generous fictional slice of urban Americana.
Run is deeply moving and absorbing… What Patchett does so well here - as in Bel Canto - is put together a group of disparate people into an unexpected situation and investigate the consequences… Patchett has once again written an intelligent, thoughtful novel that oozes emotional intensity. She is the kind of storyteller who makes the reader sad to come to the last page.
...a brilliant exploration of the true nature of parenthood.
Ann Patchett...has written a spectacular autumn book; moody and thoughtful, gentle in its handling of weighty topics, and quietly suspensful. [T]he ending is an emotionally poignant culmination.
Compelling.
Run is strongly recommended.
...full of affection and respect, for her characters and for the world, which is why reading her feels so elegant and so satisfying.
Ann Patchett can be counted on to deliver novels rich in imaginative bravado and psychological nuance.
This author specializes in delving beneath the surface...RUN shimmers with its author’s rarefied eloquence, and with the deep resonance of her insights.
Ms. Patchett comes home.
...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.
About the author
