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First Published:
Sep 2007, 304 pages
Paperback:
Jul 2008, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Lee Gooden
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Set over a period of twenty-four hours, Run 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.
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.
Chapter One
Bernadette had been dead two weeks when her sisters showed up in Doyle's living room asking for the statue back. They had no legal claim to it, of course, she never would have thought of leaving it to them, but the statue had been in their family for four generations, passing down a maternal line from mother to daughter, and it was their intention to hold with tradition. Bernadette had no daughters. In every generation there had been an uncomfortable moment when the mother had to choose between her children as there was only one statue and these Irish Catholic families were large. The rule in the past had always been to give it to the girl who most resembled the statue, and among Bernadette and her siblings, not that the boys ever had a chance, Bernadette was the clear winner: iron rust hair, dark blue eyes, a long, narrow nose. It was frankly unnerving at times how much the carving looked like Bernadette, as if she had at some point modeled in a blue robe with a halo ...
There is a magical quality to the writing - not a hocus-pocus abracadabra, pull a rabbit out of the hat magic, but a more primal magic that makes one shiver in realization that below the mundane every-day world is a shimmering substrata of unconditional love...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Lee Gooden).
Ichthyology is the branch of zoology that studies fish. This includes skeletal fish, cartilaginous fish and jawless fish.
There are at least 25,000 fish species in existence. Each year, about 250 new species are discovered and described.
The largest species of fish known is theWhale Shark, which can grow to up to 50 feet in length and can weigh 15 tons or more.
There is much debate over which is the smallest known species of fish. One contender is the tiny carp-like Paedocypris progenetica, that grows to a maximum of about 10mm.
Another is the male Photocorynus spiniceps which grows to about 6 mm at maturity; but he is hampered in his claim by the overly-large female spiniceps that grows to a record-destroying 4.5cm!
Possibly the strongest ...
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