Book Review: Ann Patchett's newest -- RUN

For months I counted down the days until Ann Patchett's newest book Run arrived in my mailbox. When it arrived I immediately set aside what I was doing and lost myself in the joy of her story-telling. 

When beautiful Bernadette Sullivan marries Boston politician and activist Bernard Doyle, she brings with her an exquisite hand-carved statue of the Madonna that bears a startling resemblance to herself. When she dies suddenly,  her sisters vie for possession of this statue that has traditionally passed from mother to daughter. Doyle refuses to give it up. He has no daughters but he has placed this statue, as a loving reminder of their mother, in the bedroom of the two young sons they'd adopted several years earlier. 

Doyle loves these boys, Tip and Terry, and dreams of a life in politics for them. They are black, bright and well-loved but neither of them is interested in politics. Dutifully, they've attended every political speech and rally to which he took them but their hearts are elsewhere. Terry wants to serve his beloved Catholic Church like his revered and aging uncle Father Sullivan. Tip, a Harvard ichthyologist, prefers to study fish and keeps his heart to himself.

Bernadette and Doyle had a natural son, Sullivan, who inherited his mother's beautiful red hair and creamy complexion but not her disposition.  Doyle has given up on this wayward, unruly son -- who surprizingly did not resent the two little black boys who usurped his place as only child but loved and doted on them. Nevertheless, having managed to inadvertently destroy his father’s career in politics, Sullivan eventually removes himself from the family and immerses himself in a ruse to distribute anti-retroviral drugs in Africa while skimming profits for himself. He returns on the snowy night in December when the Doyle’s comparatively safe and comfortable lives explode.

That night, Doyle insists that Tip and Terry attend a speech given by Jessie Jackson. After the event,  Tip's patience with his father's dreams shatters and while shouting a challenge  steps off the curb and into the path of an oncoming car. He is hurled to safety by a woman who takes the full impact of the Chevy Tahoe bearing down on him. With her is her eleven-year-old daughter Kenya. When the ambulance transports the woman and Tip (whose ankle has been broken)  to the hospital, Kenya is relegated to Doyle's care. While waiting in the hospital for news of her mother's ("Tennessee -- like the state") condition, they learn that she has no other family. She is determined to stay in the hospital with her mother but Terry insists they have an obligation to take her home with them. Doyle, concerned about accusations of unlawful abduction, is reluctant to assume responsibility for her. The boys remind him that authorities don't pay attention to what happens to black children. This is one of the few instances in Run where issues of race rise to the surface. Doyle's boys belong in the affluent circle where they've grown up. Kenya's situation is much different. She comes from poverty where want has segregated her mother and herself into a housing development only blocks from where the Doyle's live.

Set within a time-frame of twenty-four hours, Run explores the ramifications the car accident has on the lives of all involved, while simultaneously delving beneath the surface events to reveal the internal stirrings of their hearts. Patchett’s belief in the essential goodness of human beings, as is reflected in all her books, shines also in Run. Perhaps this is why the black sheep of the family, Sullivan, is the one who manifests the greatest depth of compassion and understanding toward Kenya.  While moving us swiftly though this densely plotted story, Patchett shows us the world -- even the terrible frightening world of conflict and tragedy -- as it can be when we remain true to our better natures and open ourselves to events as they unfold.

One of the joys of reading Patchett’s fiction, is the way she takes her readers to places where they might never otherwise go -- to the world of opera and terrorism in Bel Canto; that of magic and architecture in The Magician’s Assistant; bartending and homelessness in Taft; unwed mothers and nuns in The Patron Saint of Liars. In Run, she introduces us to a Ichthyology laboratory at Harvard, and a four story home in Boston where a family must negotiate the complex series of events engendered one snowy December night. I also love the way she makes scintillating forays into common place experiences. In Bel Canto, a kiss turns the opening pages into lyric art. In Run we are launched with Kenya into the realm of euphoria.

“She let herself float forward, every step a leap, her legs stretching out like scissors, opened wide. She was a swimmer, a gymnastics star, she was a superhuman force that sat outside the fundamental law of nature. Gravity did not apply to her . . .” 

Just as gravity did not apply to Kenya as she ran, neither does the gravity of the situations unleashed in the 24 hours of Run weigh Patchett’s characters down. In defiance of defeat, the events of that night strengthen and bring them more closely together even as it frees them to be the individuals they might otherwise not have become.

Beryl is the author of The Scent of God and was named "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors" by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Her book was a Book Sense notable for April 2006.