Running by Cara Hoffman Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“The city was like a beacon. And it drew us from wherever we'd been left. For me, the outskirts of a smoke jumpers' base in a cold mountain town, for Jasper and Milo the London suburbs and rain-soaked council housing of Manchester. We were looking for nothing and had found it in Athens: Demeter's lips white as stone, Apollo's yellow mantle sun washed, sanded, wind loan to granite.”- Running, Cara Hoffman

Running brings together an ensemble of outsiders who get by as “runners”—hustlers who sell tourists on low-end accommodations for a small commission and a place to stay.

Bridey Sullivan, a young American woman who has fled a peculiar and traumatic upbringing in Washington State, takes up with a queer British couple, the poet Milo Rollack and Eton drop-out Jasper Lethe. Slipping in and out of homelessness, addiction, and under-the-table jobs, they create their own kind of family as they struggle to survive.

Jasper’s madness and consequent death frame a narrative of emotional intensity. In its midst this trio become linked to an act of terrorism. The group then splinters, taking us from Athens to the cliffs of the Mediterranean, and to modern-day New York.

Whether in the red light district of Athens or in the world of fire jumpers in the Pacific Northwest, we are always in a space of gorgeously wrought otherness.

Not since starting this blog have I stopped and erased and restarted a review as many times as I have for this book. I first attempted to write a review when I finished the novel for the first time, but decided I needed more time to think this book through. It's been two days, and I still think I need more time, though frankly at this point it could be one month later and I'd still not be able to get my thoughts entirely collected and articulate enough to be able to express exactly what this book did to me.

Because here's the thing. I didn't love this book while reading it. In fact, I spent most of the reading experience not knowing how to feel about the characters, the prose, the plot, you know, the three main things a reader is supposed to connect to to enjoy a novel. 

In fact, one might look at this book and think I would hate it, because it screams pretension, and even if this novel ends up topping your best of 2017 list you can't really deny that Hoffman has set out to write Literature with a capital L. Sad, really, because the most this novel could probably hope for is a devoted cult following, given that Hoffman is not a big name in the literary world even after three novels (by big name I mean someone along the same lines as Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, etc, authors who will regardless of personal taste go down in the classical canon, if even for one work) all of which have amazingly low scores for Goodreads, a website where almost every book has a score in the middling to upper three stars. Normally, I dislike books that are so transparently written to be Literature, since books like that often feel phony in some way. 

But there's something about this book that just, well, mesmerized me. The grittiness of the setting, the despicable characters, all of that just grabbed me. There's something very Beat Generation about it, and as I have a huge, little known soft spot for the much hated Beatniks it was easy for it to work for me. Also, I don't demand likability from my characters, unless of course the author demands it from me in which case the character is usually insufferable, so I wasn't too bothered by the horribleness of all three of the main characters- even Milo, the most likely candidate for the story's moral center. Four if you count Declan. I actually liked that Hoffman had so much confidence in her writing ability that the characters' ugliness worked well with the story, and I have to give her major props for refusing to add a character to function as an actual villain. Even Declan can't be wholly considered a villain, because, as Bridey says, he's still their friend. This was smart of Hoffman, and by doing so she introduces a great point so little seen done well in literature- that there are no villains in real life, because everyone is absolutely awful to each other.

That being said, I did have a favorite character or at least a character that intrigued me the most. And that was Jasper. Jasper is like if Sebastian from Brideshead Revisited went absolutely fucking mental and decided that when he inevitably self destructs, he is going to take the world down with him. I don't know why I liked Jasper so much, but I did. His flippant interactions with others and dark sense of humor actually got real laughs out of me, and his relationships with Milo and Bridey fascinated me, as well as his past. I was disappointed that so much was unsaid about Jasper, though I understand that it's more literary to have a character like that in a novel. Another reason why I liked Jasper so much was because he was a great take down of the whole Manic Pixie Dream Girl or Boy or whatever, this seemingly free spirit whose effect on both Bridey and Milo (especially Milo) ended up being more detrimental than anything else. 

I think my biggest criticism- and it's a big one, the main reason why my actual reading experience wasn't that great- is the confused narrative. I think that the flashback parts with Bridey and the present parts with Milo did nothing to help the novel along and just made me not like either of the characters. Both Bridey's past and Milo's present were slow and meandering and dragged the story down. Bridey's present parts were less annoying in the grand scheme of the novel, because it made sense that she would come back to Greece to find the boys (although a bit maddening because she could just Google Milo's name and discover that he lived in New York). And besides, we did get some great descriptions of Greece to sate my lazy wanderlust (A part of me wants to travel, but the part of me that doesn't like leaving home always wins). I wish Hoffman had enough faith to let the main plot, Bridey and Jasper and Milo in Athens in the 80s, carry the book.

That being said, I am surprised just how much the prose grew on me, to the point where I kind of fell in love with it. I love the way this book is written, so much so that I even love the entire ending paragraph even though it's something that was so obviously tacked on for the sake of literature. There's a kind of ache to it that makes me feel like crying, and nowhere is this more apparent than the entire scene when Jasper and Milo are fighting about the passports and just how sick Jasper is is revealed. You don't have to like either of them, but you can't help but feel for them in that scene.

In the end, I think the fact that I can't stop thinking about this book makes me give it a higher score than it should actually have given. Not everyone is going to like this book. In fact, I'd wager a guess that many people will actually hate it, with good reason to, and I'd probably not recommend it out much at all. But the more I reflect on it, the more I like it, and frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if my rating for this book actually goes up in retrospect- after all, in the days since reading I've tweaked the rating probably five times. I will need to read another Cara Hoffman novel eventually to see if I can form a more solid opinion on her and her books, but maybe not for a while. I haven't been this haunted by a book in a long time.

8-8.5 out of 10