In the midst of this election season, which has been alternately horrifying and depressing, I read Run, a great new novel by Ann Patchett, one of my favorite contemporary novelists. The “run” of the title refers both the physical activity and the electoral one, and throughout the book characters repeat legendary political speeches to each other by the likes of Eugene Debs and FDR, in a device that never feels gimmicky, happily enough.
I’ve read all of Patchett’s novels except her first (which I’m determined to pick up soon), finding her through Bel Canto and falling in lovethen, and being even more in love after reading Truth and Beauty, her memoir of her friendship with writer and poet Lucy Grealy. Run is another great book, not quite as great as Bel Canto but still moving forward as a writer, and still engaged in her usual themes of friendship and family, strangers and the familiar. The characters were well and finely drawn, but I think the book’s great strength is how it treats subjects (interracial families, death of a parent, adoption) that could easily become maudlin or cliched without becoming either. None of these characters are cardboard, none are moral messengers with no flesh on their bones, and none of these relationships feel forced or artificial. Run is not a “message” or “problem” novel, but it does convey great messages, and think carefully about great problems.
