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Summary and Reviews of Run by Ann Patchett

Run by Ann Patchett

Run

by Ann Patchett
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  • First Published:
  • Sep 25, 2007, 304 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jul 2008, 320 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

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 ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. The first chapter of the book focused on the statue and who should rightfully inherit it. How did this chapter affect your impressions of the book? Did the statue play the role you thought it would?
  2. What year would you place the story? Is it modern day or some other time in the past/future?
  3. The author uses the statue to introduce the issue of race and family relations. Was this effectively played out?
  4. The boys kept finding similarities in their "sister" Kenya – when the fact was…she wasn't related at all. Even Doyle was noticing the physical similarities….were they seeing it because of suggestion?
  5. The book shows us a family that is dysfunctional ...
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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

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 Members Only (515 words)

(Reviewed by Lee Gooden).

Media Reviews

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 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.

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.

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.

Reader Reviews

Cathryn Conroy

An Imaginative, Mesmerizing Novel: Magnificent Writing and (Best of All) a Really Good Story
This imaginative novel by Ann Patchett is a complex examination of the meaning of family, the secrets we hold to protect those we love, and what it means to do the right thing for others and ourselves—and it all takes place at that tricky ...   Read More
MCM

Run
I had read Bel Canto a few years ago and was excited to read Run. I found the first chapter to be very engaging, and I was drawn into the story immediately. I especially liked Kenya's character and I thought Patchett did a nice job of having her ...   Read More
J. Arnold

Outstanding
Ann Patchett's Run has to be one of the best books I have read this year. The plot of the story is light and the ending is predictable, but the character development and use of shifting point of view is brilliant. Each character in this novel is ...   Read More
Mary Spilsbury Ross

Run and Find this Book
Like Ann Patchett's bestselling Bel Canto, Run is easily believable. In a 24 hour period we get to know a half dozen people who though related in various ways are all different in thought, ambition, desires and weakness. Icy cold is the ...   Read More

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Beyond the Book



Ichthyology

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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Read-Alikes

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