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Grady Harp is the Amazon #7 Reviewer
Ann Patchett is one of our finer story tellers writing today and certainly her latest novel Run
Patchett has the uncanny ability to introduce ‘facsimiles’ of characters in very subtle ways, blending her ingredient characters slowly, revealing their full personalities and places in the storyline so gradually that reading about them resembles meeting new acquaintances at a party - some will fade, others will materialize as leads.
In RUN, Patchett addresses mixed race adoption, responses to death, biologic versus adoptive mothers, and family dynamics, all in the course of a twenty-four hour period of time, and in doing so she compresses so much information that reading this fine novel begs for a one sitting time frame to read it from cover to cover.
Former Boston Mayor Bernard Doyle and his Irish wife Bernadette had one child - Sullivan - a lad who failed to fulfill his father’s expectations of entering the political arena. Sullivan was involved in a tragedy that affected not only Sullivan and his girlfriend, but also fragmented Bernard’s career. Unable to have further children, the couple adopted an African American newborn ‘Teddy’ only to have the child’s biologic mother (Tennessee Moser) offer her 14-month-old child ‘Tip’ to the Doyles - an offer the Doyles happily accepted. Bernadette dies too soon and the two African American brothers are raised by Bernard: Sullivan has fled to Africa to work with AIDS patients as a means to assuage his guilt for the tragedy he caused. The story begins on a wintry night after a Jesse Jackson lecture when Tip is saved from a near tragic SUV collision by a woman who pushes him to safety - that woman being Tennessee who had been to the lecture with her eleven-year-old daughter Kenya. Tennessee is critically injured and Kenya is invited by the Doyles to stay with them while her mother is taken to the hospital: Tip’s sole injury from the accident is a damaged ankle. It is the manner in which the discovery of kinship between Kenya and Tennessee and Teddy and Tip that shapes the next day’s events.
Patchett gradually builds this chocolate and vanilla layered cake to allow us to see how Tennessee has secretly followed her two sons Tip and Teddy and their father, keeping her distance, but never forsaking her love and concern for her own boys. Kenya is taken in by the Doyle men, including the now returned from Africa Sullivan, and the melding of this mixed family faces the challenges of discovering roots, loss of adopted mother and re-entry of biologic mother, and the bonding of true family.
If the novel has a disappointing ending (Patchett jumps in time to four years hence that tidies up too many loose ends too quickly), that last chapter’s slightly hokey summation is minor when the entire novel is considered. Patchett writes with intelligent style, elegant prose, and timely character development, creating a story that remains with the reader long after the last page. It is a fine book, worthy of the attention it is receiving on the Top 10 Lists. Highly Recommended.
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