Run! But where are we running?!

While Ann Patchett's Run! provocatively poses questions about family and relationships and invites readers into beautifully omninous and emotionally-charged landscapes, it never asks the question that the novel ultimately is trying to answer. Readers are given lots of information, but never really told what to do with it. Ann Patchett certainly has a knack for putting readers squarely in her characters' shoes. In past works, her characters often behave badly or irrationally, but Patchett is able to create a psyche so complete, it's easy for readers to be sympathetic to poor and unreasonable decisions. Run! is no different. Here, each figure is three-dimensional and Patchett is able to change the tone of the narrator to match the speaker's voice. She is able to weave to and from different perspectives and create an omniscient narrator that is able to speak in the first person. When Sullivan is speaking, the narrator knows his dirty secrets and feelings about them. The reader is able to learn why Tennessee did what she did and why Tip behaves the way he does, without clunky background dialogue or narration. Further, the scenery in the novel is so well used and portrayed, it essentially functions as another character. Clearly, Patchett had to create the blizzard for some of the plot pieces to work, but in a novel where there is such a stark contrast between character's inner monologues and outer actions, it helps to have them literally bracing against the frigid outside world. That said, the novel introduces potentially powerful questions surrounding the concept of family, i.e. what is family in the absence of an actual genetic relationship? Who are the people in our lives that we choose to love unconditionally? Patchett introduces these ideas in scenes between Sullivan and Kenya or between Tennessee and her sons. Unfortunately, Patchett spends so much time on inconsequential descriptions that any attempts to challenge these themes are completely diluted. There are moments when extensive and completely obscure detail seemed so useless that I was skimming pages at a time. This novel would have been well suited as a tightly distilled short story. And then there were the completely unnecessary, bordering on absurd plot points that made me wonder if her contract required that the novel be at least 300 pages. In her effort to portray each character, I felt it was wholly unnecessary to make sure they each had one quirky thing that they were obsessed with. In my life, I can't think of anything that any of the people I know have to do obsessively otherwise they will go crazy. Yes, everyone has activities that they are happiest doing, but the forced effort to give characters hobbies was bizarre. The fish, the speeches, the running! Why?! Finally, I have not been able to pin down why she chose the title. I get it, Kenya likes to run, but how does that pertain to the all-around familial theme? Any ideas are very welcome.