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.
Book Reviews
BookBrowse - Lee Gooden
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. Full Review (members only, 811 words).
Library Journal - Sarah Conrad Weisman
[A]n engrossing and enjoyable novel. While there are a few unexpected turns, the reader very quickly figures out where the plot is headed, but that does not detract from the pleasure of reading.
Publishers Weekly
[T]he book is lovely to read and is satisfyingly bold in its attempt to say something patient and true about family. "Signature review" by Andrew O'Hagan.
The Boston Athenaeum
As the fates of her exquisitely rendered, wholly sympathetic characters unfold, Patchett has much to tell us about ourselves and how we choose to live our lives.
The Times - Helen Dunmore
Chance and accident rule this novel. Ann Patchett’s characters may believe that they possess their lives and construct their own stories, but as the narrative twists and swerves these assumptions are swept away. Just as a regulated and smoothly-running city can be paralysed by a snowstorm, so the five people who step out of the Kennedy School will never live out the futures they hold in their heads.
The Guardian - Patrick Ness
This is above all a book about good people who try to do their best by each other. Patchett's great strength is to accomplish this without sentiment or stupidity. While there may never be a great, evil Ann Patchett villain, there is sadness, and if it is surrounded by compassion rather than starkness, by good humour rather than bitterness, why should that make it any less affecting?
The Telegraph (UK) - Judith Hawley
This is a humane and sympathetic novel. It shifts between characters, linking them through verbal echoes. We move easily from the dreams of one to the reveries of another without feeling that liberties are being taken with the reader's trust.
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Run
(members only, 811 words).
Library Journal - Sarah Conrad Weisman
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