It appears the first review of 2008 will be falling way, way short of a rave. Yesterday afternoon, four-ish, I finished reading Run by Ann Patchett. Now a few years ago I read her Bel Canto. I liked it, events at its end blew me away, and its impact continued to haunt, so much so that I took it out of the books-to-the-library box and may someday read it again. With Bel Canto in mind, I was really looking forward to Run. Sad to say but now, less than twenty-four hours later, I'm having trouble remembering what it was about. Oh, yes. Characters include an ex-mayor of Boston, his two adopted African-Americans, their birth mother, an eleven-year-old girl the birth mother raised, the ex-major's firstborn son whose behavior caused a scandal bad enough to force the major to resign, and several others. Damn! Those characters sound interesting just in a list. Shame the book isn't.
I did dog-ear one page that appealed to the once-upon-a-time speech professor in me. A lecture by Jesse Jackson is about to start and one of the many point-of-view characters is thinking: "You never got everyone's attention, not if you were the Pope saying mass in St. Peter's square or Renee Fleming* in recital at Carnegie Hall or Czeslaw Milosz* reading his poetry in Polish for the first time. The only way to make everyone listen was to start a fire in the middle of the room and then identify the location of all emergency exits. And even then, if you took the time to notice, there would always be someone running frantically in the opposite directions." (page 33) Sure sounds like something I should have passed on to my students. Oh, well. Maybe next time.
*Nope. I have no idea who they are. Maybe if I have the time and interest this afternoon, I'll google them.
