BooksReviewNever mind the twists, just savour the joy of the prose in Ann Patchett's Run, says Patrick NessRun
by Ann Patchett
295pp, Bloomsbury, £14.99
Warmth is an underrated literary quality. So readily does it congeal into schmaltz, so quickly can it become as insufferable as those wretched Mitch Albom books about the people you'd hope to avoid when you died, that its absence has become almost a prerequisite to be taken seriously as a literary writer. JM Coetzee is many great things; he is not warm. We serious types like our books strict and harsh, cynical and caustic, with a wry outlook on love about as close as we trust ourselves to get to actual warmth.
Yet here is Ann Patchett - winner of the Orange prize for her previous novel, Bel Canto, and author of The Magician's Assistant, which is even better - clearly a literary novelist, tackling serious themes with sharp and fresh writing and willing to stray into unusual territory. But her books are also so warm, so overflowing with love and affection, that when you've finished reading one your first inclination is to embrace it. And then check quickly over your shoulder to make sure no one's seen you.
Run is the story of Doyle, former mayor of Boston and widower of Bernadette, an Irish Catholic beauty who wanted more children than their single natural son, Sullivan. Doyle and Bernadette adopted Teddy, a black infant, and shortly thereafter were astonished and delighted when told that Teddy's mother was also offering them Teddy's 14-month-old brother Tip. They took both boys in, but Bernadette's unexpected death from cancer left Doyle to raise them on his own.
Though any other father on the planet would regard them as success stories - Tip goes on to Harvard to study ichthyology and Teddy is thinking of entering the priesthood - Doyle is disappointed that neither son seems willing to follow him into politics. He constantly takes them to political events, and on one wintry Boston night they go to see Jesse Jackson.
But Tip, finally, has had enough. After the speech is over, he gets into an argument with Doyle and, not looking where he's going, steps in front of an oncoming car. He's pushed to safety at the last second by Tennessee Moser, a middle-aged black woman who is badly injured when the car hits her instead. An unconscious Tennessee is rushed to hospital, leaving her 11-year-old daughter, Kenya, in the unexpected temporary care of Doyle and his sons.
Why, though, would Tennessee risk her life to save a stranger? Why would she endanger herself so readily with so little thought? The answer is easily guessed and Patchett doesn't make us wait for its understandably tumultuous outcome. The rest of the novel plays out over the next 24 hours.
Patchett has been a dab hand at taking unlikely plots and turning them into believable novels. Bel Canto was about an opera singer performing for a Japanese ambassadorial party in South America whose guests are all taken hostage in a coup attempt. What could have been the thickest of melodrama was instead somehow magical. She can't quite pull off the same trick with Run, but there is still the joy of Patchett's writing.
Jesse Jackson's sonorous speaking style has never been better described than here: "Once you gave yourself over to the swinging cadence of his oratory you found yourself agreeing with ideas you could never completely remember."
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?
· Patrick Ness's most recent book is Topics About Which I Know Nothing (Harper Perennial)
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