Run by Ann Patchett (spoilers)

I am finding this novel quite hard to review. I generally enjoyed it, it was a quite gentle read with some good characters and plot twists, and I love Patchett’s writing style, but at the same time I found myself feeling quite dissatisfied with a few aspects, maybe this was because I enjoyed State of Wonder so much and found this paler in comparison.

The novel explores family relationships between Bernard Doyle and his three sons (Sullivan, who is his biological son and his two adopted sons Tip and Teddy) and Tennessee and her daughter Kenya, and what happens when Tennessee and Tip are involved in an accident. Although Tip, Teddy, Tennessee and Kenya are black, I would argue that the novel doesn’t go into race issues in any depth. The fact that Tennessee and Kenya live in a housing project and she is too poor to afford medical insurance is glossed over, as are Bernard’s previous political aspirations and life as a mayor. This would have been interesting to explore in more depth. 

 I can’t say that I felt particularly engaged with the characters, perhaps this was due to the number which meant that their stories were spread quite thin.   I agree with Leah Hagen Cohen’s  remark in her review in the New York Times suggesting that the characters ‘ultimately feel less real than symbolic, as wooden as the Virgin’s statue’ (September 30^th 2007). The problem seems to be that there is a sense that they are defined by few characteristics, particularly ‘sweet’ Teddy and ‘clever’ Tip. Father Sullivan and his namesake, Sullivan are more interesting characters in comparison, but again, Father Sullivan’s apparent healing of two women is not really explored, it’s sometimes as if she’s thrown everything in but not really found time to explore it or tie it together. 

The final issue was the clunky anaesthesia-induced reunion of Tennessee and her friend Tennessee Alice Moser. I understand why she did it (to reveal a secret to the reader that the rest of the characters weren’t supposed to ever learn), but I found it a bit of a cheesy plot device.

 In comparison, I thought the motif of the statue of the Virgin Mary was handled nicely and the ending was quite satisfying; it gave the novel a nice kind of symmetry and a sense of progression. Overall, I liked the plot as well.  I feel as if I’ve mostly written about the negative aspects, even though I didn’t feel that negatively towards it when I was reading it. Overall, it’s an uplifting, entertaining book, and I am probably judging it too harshly for what it isn’t rather than what it is. 

References

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Cohen-t.html