Customer Reviews
Not as simple as it looks. 
2008-10-06
Run by Ann Pachette
At first, my interest in this book was about a single parent with adopted children. It became even more interested when an incident brings another child to them for caretaking. This is a fantasy of mine, that I will be in a situation to care for a needy child.(I am a child and family therapist but cannot "rescue" children I work with professionally.) This part of the story is somewhat contrived but the ending, somewhat predictable but not in the sense of a recurring dream I have had since my husband died suddenly at a young age. In my dream, my late husband is always leaving. I'm now reading about a woman who disappears, needing to be invisible from her family.The theme of leaving a family under so many unusual conditions is a curious one. It leaves you wondering where is the character running away from or running toward. This is what made the book so interesting. I thought it was well written and now my favorite of Ann Pachette.
Slowly Reaches the Finish Line 
2008-09-24
I wanted so much to like this book. It speaks to so many life-impacting themes - family, race, class, politics, science. But, the many enjoyable parts do not congeal into a satisfying whole. The prose is softly spoken even when describing pain and death, and follow-on grief. The writer turns some phrases so well that they warrant reading them aloud. In a natural, off-hand manner, Patchett centers the plot on a white politician's and his wife's adopting two black children to fill out their one-child family. The children's acceptance by the Irish extended family further defines the capacity to love those born outside our bloodline. This is a strong, well done element of the book. The first sentence tells us that Bernadette, the mother has died, and this sets the tone for how the all-male unit, including the uncle, Father Sullivan continues in her absence. Yet, she is never truly absent; her memory drives the men's thoughts and actions. Also, the writer uses the device of the mother to connect to the other females, including the statue of the Madonna. Two of these females are another mother and her daughter, who are introduced in a contrived scene (one of several that just don't ring true). All the characters, including walk-on parts, convey nearly total goodness. Perhaps, this is the critical weakness in the story: everyone is just too good. The inter-generational conflict, the appearance of the birth mother, everyone's quiet approach to loss (lots of losses here), are subdued to the point of robotic. Yes, the characters are likeable, even lovable, if too often flat. The research in history and science is apparent. There just isn't enough dramatic heat to fuel total interest in the story.
24-hour story 
2008-09-22
The 24-hour period covered in the story (about the length of time that elapsed from start to finish for me) makes for a "real-time" and fast-paced plot. Draws you in and keeps you reading.
Boston is slammed to a standstill by an unexpected snowstorm, just as a car accident plunges the Doyles into the mind-boggling puzzle of their past. Animation is suspended in the city while the family discovers and sorts out their ties with Tennessee and her young daughter Kenya. It's intriguing that in the end, the reader is the only one who knows the whole truth.
Other reviewers have questioned the plausibility of some of the plot's turns. How did Beverly pull off her identity change, for instance? She managed it because, just as none of the police or ambulance people were concerned enough to find out if Kenya had anywhere to go after the accident or to assist Tip, lying in the snow, no one was paying attention when two black women melted into one.
My only quibbles are with the Boston geography and weather. Why would you have to go past Mass. General on the way from the Back Bay to Mt. Auburn hospital? And Pachett should have made the temperature lower than 20 degrees on the sunny day after the snow storm to warrant all the fuss about the arctic conditions.
This is a Story You'll Remember 2008-09-07
Twenty years ago or so His Honor Bernard Doyle and his Wife Bernadette adopted an African American baby. Later they get a phone call, the mother can't care for the child's older brother, would they adopt him as well? So, the Doyles, who already had a twelve-year-old son now have two new sons, ages five and fourteen months.
Four years later Bernadette dies and Doyle has to raise the children on his own. He's a lover of politics and he wants that for his new sons, but one turns to science, the other wants to be a priest and his oldest has turned out the be the black sheep of the family. It's because of him that Doyle had to leave politics.
In the present Doyle drags his sons to see a Jesse Jackson speech. A car bears down on one of them. An African American woman rushes from the crowd, pushes the boy to safety, but is struck herself. She has a young daughter named Kenya and from her the Doyles learn Kenya's mother is also the mother of Doyles two sons.
And there you have it, the setup for a heartwarming, sometimes feel good, sometimes sad, always real story. There isn't the tension here you'll find in Bel Canto, but there is more humanity, more soul. I thought so anyway, but Lord knows I could be wrong, I often am, but this story moved me in a way Bel Canto did not, though I don't want to be seen to be slighting Bel Canto in any way as it's a masterpiece, just different than this story, I guess that's what I'm saying. This is a book about family. It's an important book, one you'll remember.
Reviewed by Vesta Irene
Run 2008-09-02
Fast paced and engrossing from the first page. Beautifully and sensitively written novel about families and the decisions made to benefit and/or protect family. Interesting and realistic characters.
RUN AWAY FROM THIS ... FAST! 
2008-08-26
Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving, possessive, and ambitious father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see his 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 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.
A Classic Example of Literary Fiction 2008-08-23
I first read Ann Patchett in "Truth and Beauty," her non-fiction work about her friend Lucy Grealy. When wandering through the library and saw her name on "Run," I had to read it. I remembered Patchett's clear, beautiful prose and felt her fiction would be a worthwhile experience.
I was not disappointed. The writing is as good as I expected, with sentences that read like a cool glass of water. Patchett brings us into the world of Doyle, Sullivan, Tip, Teddy, and Kenya slowly, subtly, until you're surprized to learn how involved you are in their lives, how much you want it to all work out ok.
"Run" is an excellent story touching on interesting social issues. Thought provoking in a casual, almost sneaky way I found this to be very enjoyable. If you enjoy good fiction, you won't be disappointed in this novel.
Family Stories 2008-08-20
Ann Patchett is a wondrous writer, capable of small miracles of grace that come seemingly from nowhere, illuminating her characters and bringing joy to the reader. Even though RUN, her latest novel, may have flaws, how can I give it less than five stars for the joy it gave me throughout? The joy that kept me reading from one magic moment to the next. The joy, even more, that would make me put the book aside, the better to savor the anticipation of what might lie ahead.
As she had done in her first novel, THE PATRON SAINT OF LIARS, Patchett begins with a prologue that is half miracle, half folklore. This concerns a rosewood statue of the Virgin Mary that has been in the family for generations, passed down from mother to daughter. Two stories are told about its origin, the first romantically heartwarming, the second more realistic and largely contradicting the facts of the first, but satisfying on an even deeper level. This prologue does two things. It sets up the basic family unit: a young mother recently dead, leaving a son of her own (Sullivan) and two younger boys (Tip and Teddy, African-American, adopted), to be brought up by the widower, a former mayor of Boston named Doyle. It also demonstrates the power of storytelling, to reveal things in one light and then to illuminate them from the other side, making them seem entirely different. The whole book will be about families and their stories, the stresses that pull families apart, and the miracles that knit them together again in unexpected ways.
Flash forward a dozen years. Despite Doyle's hope to steer his adopted sons into politics (look at their names), Tip is becoming a marine biologist and Teddy is considering the priesthood, following the example of a beloved uncle, Father Sullivan; the other Sullivan, the eldest brother, has become estranged and now lives in Africa. An accident in the snow at night after a lecture by Jesse Jackson brings two other people into their lives: an unwed mother named Tennessee, and her eleven-year-old daughter Kenya, both black. The main action of the book will follow these seven characters for the next twenty-four hours. If Patchett were writing an opera, almost all her scenes would be duets; she has a way of bringing her characters together in different combinations, and to reveal something new about them each time. Essentially, this is the same structure as in her celebrated BEL CANTO; none of the scenes here, though, are love duets in the conventional sense, but all are suffused with love in other ways, and this is perhaps the greatest miracle of all.
It is hard to illustrate this without giving the plot away, but perhaps I can quote from one of the few solo scenes in the book, where the old priest Father Sullivan contemplates his death. "He had started to wonder if there was in fact no afterlife at all . . . How wrongheaded it seemed now to think that the thrill of heartbeat and breath was just a stepping stone to something greater. What could be greater than the armchair, the window, the snow? Life itself had been holy. We had been brought forth from nothing to see the face of God and in his life Father Sullivan has seen it miraculously for eighty-eight years . . . This was not the workings of disbelief. It was instead a final, joyful realization of all he had been given."
RUN is right up there with all but one of Patchett's previous books, although its African-American characters and theme of parenthood brings it closest to TAFT. But some readers looking for a repeat of her masterly BEL CANTO, its immediate predecessor, may well be disappointed. The brushstrokes -- that texture of close personal interactions -- are exactly the same, but the canvas here is smaller. The hostage situation in BEL CANTO allowed Patchett to set small scenes within a large political context; she has remarked that she thinks of RUN as a political novel too, with Doyle a kind of Joe Kennedy, but really her essential focus is on the human level. I also have to say that the climactic scene in RUN does not have quite the same cogency of those that lead up to it, and not all the loose ends are tied up; but to be honest, I recall being disappointed by the ending of BEL CANTO too. Nonetheless, my discovery of Ann Patchett's work five years ago almost single-handedly restored my delight in reading, and I rejoice that even in a slightly imperfect book she can still bring such pleasure now.
Nice, feel-good story (3.25*s) 
2008-08-11
This novel is a rather kindly, subdued look at a mix of family, race, and class issues that in other hands would likely have been far more explosive. Boston, Irish politico Doyle (no first name given) has single-handedly raised his two black, adopted sons, Teddy, age 20, and Tip, age 21, for the last sixteen years. His natural-born son Sullivan, age 33, has proven to be a disappointment, but his adopted two have grown to show great potential for whatever life may bring.
The story, which occurs over a twenty-four hour period, gets its impetus when Tip's life is fortuitously saved by a black woman who knocks him out of the way of a SUV in a nighttime snow storm, only to be seriously injured herself. The woman has an eleven-year-old daughter named Kenya, who seems to be remarkably mature and prescient, especially in terms of her knowing details of the Doyle family. As the mother Tennessee is visited in the hospital and Kenya is taken under the wings of the Doyle's, more is learned of the connections and commonalities of all parties.
The book is basically a feel-good examination of family and its possibilities even in the face of the premature death of a parent, the short-changing of birth-mothers, and the difficulties of adoption. The book is fairly short as the night's events are resolved; the characters are no more than sketched; but the most interesting character by far is Kenya. Overall, the book is a nice, short story, but it really makes no effort to aspire to greatness.
twenty stars for this one 2008-08-11
Take your time reading this one. This is a book that forces you to care deeply about the characters in it, the urban landscapes, nature and everything everything everything in it. You'll want to savor each page and take it all with you. Be prepared for a few nights of serious sleep deprivation.
