Simon & Schuster, February 21, 2017.
Four Stars
Set in the red-light district of Athens in the 1980s,
Running follows a group of teenagers/young
adults working as “runners” – they hustle tourists to sell cheap, low-end accommodation,
in exchange for a small commission and a place to sleep. Their sales techniques
are often aggressive and even dangerous, and the kids barely make enough money to
survive in the slums of Athens.
Bridey is an American teenager, working as a runner
to escape her traumatic childhood – after the death of her parents when she was
ten, Bridey lived with her survivalist uncle, off the grid in the wilderness of
Washington state. In Athens, she meets a gay British couple, Milo and Jasper.
The two men are intellectuals and poets, and they are both damaged in their own
way. Jasper, Milo and Bridey embark on an unusual romantic relationship that is
based more on comfort than sex – they create their own intimate family, carving
out a home in their ramshackle hotel room, furnished with flea market finds.
All three of the young runners are troubled, but it
is Jasper’s spiral into addiction and madness that begins to drive them apart. They
get involved with a violent IRA member named Declan, who is running a stolen
passport racket, and eventually they are linked to an act of terrorism on a
Greek train. Bridey sacrifices everything to clear the names of her friends, and
she is forced to disappear from Athens. When she returns, she discovers that
everything has changed in shocking ways – Jasper is missing, and Milo is
devastated.
The descriptions of the runners’ former lives in
Athens are alternated with Milo’s current life in New York. After he lost touch
with Bridey, his career as a poet flourished, eventually leading to a job
teaching poetry at NYU. Although he has been welcomed into the establishment of
the literati, Milo struggles with feeling like an outsider, and he is more at
home with the homeless people living in the park. Whether we are in Washington,
Athens or New York City, the setting is distinct and atmospheric – I felt
completely immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of each location.
The plot was always moving to unexpected places, with
surprising twists that remained believable. There is a lot going on in this
novel, and it was sometimes difficult to figure out where/when we are in the
plot, but it does all come together in a powerful way. The prose is beautiful,
and the story is rewarding if you stick with it. The characters’ motives are
not always clear at first, but there is an emotional depth in these snapshots
of desperate young lives that makes it all worthwhile. I will definitely be
looking for more books by Cara Hoffman.
I received this book from Simon & Schuster and
NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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