Someone to Run With by David Grossman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I admit it. I get too restless to read sometimes. And the only thing that will calm me down is the right book. But that can be woefully hard to find. It's like a sleepless night. I toss and turn, trying to settle down with this and that book, trying not to let my impatience get the better of me, eventually giving up 20 or 30 pages into whatever is currently failing to catch my attention. I realize it isn't the fault of these books. It's just that when I'm in this state, not much will do it for me.

It has to be quick-tempoed enough that I don't feel my ennui. It has to have an interesting structure and characters that are brave and flawed and cool. If it has a dog or a horse aspect I tend to settle down more readily, but animal aspects are so hard to do well that such books are a rare delight. The novel's struggle has to be convincing and important and not full of gratuitous violence. A love story in the middle of everything else is great. The writing has to be first rate. And I have to read it half holding my breath and thinking "I want everyone I know to read this book, this passage, this story, this character, this conversation."

Fortunately for me, my husband was in the book business for decades, and still has one of the best libraries I've ever seen. Even more fortunate is that he seems never to tire of suggesting things for me to read, and he knows how I am by now. Not just anything good will do. It has to fit the bill.

Someone to Run With is a wonderful story, told in a way that brings the reader close to many moments she may recall from her own life...the betrayal of friends, the pain of unrequited love, the strange unavoidable necessity of sacrifice at the crossroads in our lives, the way art changes everything for us all. David Grossman clearly loves to tell a story, in a deep, classical, ordered way, that fortunately allows for longing and frustration, impossible missions, heroic rescues. It is a novel full of what a story can be in the hands of a writer who loves what a story can be. Few novels are so ready to take full advantage of what it is to be fiction, to walk the shimmering edge between the desperation we all feel not to fail utterly in our everyday selves and the deep-in-our-heart dreams of what we might be if only we had the courage to live our lives like the stories we love.

Read it read it read it next time you are restless or afraid or thinking that life is too thin and hard for your soul to bear.



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