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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. Whether in the red light district of Athens or the world of fire jumpers in the Pacific Northwest, we are always in a space of gorgeously wrought otherness. Running shows novelist Cara Hoffman to be writing at the peak of her craft.
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Reviews
"This uncompromising, incendiary novel holds true to the same fierce commitments as its haunting, haunted characters: it follows risk beyond all rules, and makes a kind of meaning I haven't seen before. Caught between acts of radical violence and radical love, Hoffman's poets and conmen are lost souls with no interest in being found, a queer family bound by affinity and nerve. I fell in love
Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
"Running is an unstoppable spark racing along a fuse. There is no escaping the heat, grime, or glittering promise of violence of Athens' underbelly, but the bond between three young drifters is infused with moments of transcendence. I devoured this beautiful book, and Hoffman's writing is a revelation."
Rae Meadows, author of I Will Send Rain
"Strange and shocking and sad-Hoffman's language is so deft and precise. I love the empathy with which she writes about the lives of outsiders, depicting the tenderness and fragility of their friendships so beautifully. Running is wonderful."
Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train