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Run
Dee lives for parkour, and the alternate worlds he invents to escape his mundane life. He knows the city better than anyone-the hidden spaces at night, the views that no one else sees, from heights no one else can scale,. With parkour, he's not running away. He's free
But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. And soon Dee is running for his life, running for real.
Run is an unmissable, paranoid thriller – genre fiction meets literary verse novel.
Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2013
2 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
About the author
Tim Sinclair
7 books5 followersTim Sinclair grew up in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia. Since then he has lived and worked in a number of different places around the world, including Kuala Lumpur, Edinburgh, Nagoya, and New York City. He currently lives in Sydney. He writes YA novels and poetry.
Note from the author: I'd love to hear from you but I'm not around here so much. Come talk to me on Insty!
Note from the author: I'd love to hear from you but I'm not around here so much. Come talk to me on Insty!
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 19, 2013
Wow. Tim Sinclair's debut verse novel on parkour is really something else. For starters, it's everything I like my verse novels to be: that delicious exploration of words and rhythm (not rhyme) and experimentation in typography variation. It's a visual masterpiece with so many pages set out in a unique and arresting format. Truly stunning, the pages are an artwork. There's an energy to the writing that drives it forward, at the same time, the words are put together so carefully that you have to stop and let the moment linger, before pushing ahead for more.
I can honestly say I have never read a book like it: the subject (so much action and thrills and paranoia and also this whole underground world I had no idea about). It's exhilarating and vivid -- I found myself being tempted by parkour, (haha, I can't even walk down stairs without tripping over imaginary cracks). I loved the Sydney setting and the relationships and the adrenalin in this book.
Finely crafted, Sinclair breathes so much life into this book. I have seen not a lot about Run out there and I truly hope it gets the attention it deserves.
I can honestly say I have never read a book like it: the subject (so much action and thrills and paranoia and also this whole underground world I had no idea about). It's exhilarating and vivid -- I found myself being tempted by parkour, (haha, I can't even walk down stairs without tripping over imaginary cracks). I loved the Sydney setting and the relationships and the adrenalin in this book.
Finely crafted, Sinclair breathes so much life into this book. I have seen not a lot about Run out there and I truly hope it gets the attention it deserves.
Read
April 2, 2013Tim Sinclair is my old friend from high school - we've talked shop often and collaborated - so no way am I gonna review his novel. But I will say one thing: the blurb doesn't do it justice. 'Genre fiction meets literary verse novel'? It's a thriller about parkour for teenagers! It's BMX Bandits without the bikes, Pattern Recognition in poems, John Carpenter meets Arthur Conan Doyle with typesetting by Kandinsky. Could be it has 'literary merit', but to dryly state it on the back cover when you're attempting to sell it to kids seems ingenuous to me. Let's hope Penguin Australia has a gameplan because I know Tim put some work into this. Oh yeah, and it ain't Vikram Seth: there's not a rhyme to be found.
Good to see it in print, Tim. Hooray!
Good to see it in print, Tim. Hooray!
May 7, 2013
This is a verse novel, told in active first person narration by a character obsessed with the activity called ‘parkour’, invented by French youths in the unemployment zone of the outer suburbs and high rise public housing in Paris. The action involves running and jumping with grace across and between buildings at night. Sinclair, the writer opens with his character making a daring drop from an overpass onto the rail of the Sydney monorail and a run to beat the train into the next station and escape the security guard there. However, the narrator Dee, a university student is alarmed to see that this and a previous parkour are on video on the internet. He is under surveillance, but by whom? Sinclair then cuts, in the first of several time jumps, back to Dee’s high school days in Adelaide where two quiet, outside boys, Dee, and Trench pretend to be training as distance runners to get school credibility and have adventures exploring the hills where they discover a shack hidden in blackberry bushes that had been lived in by some loner university student previously.
Trench learnt parkour in Paris and teaches Dee. Here Sinclair varies the typography and also uses concrete or shaped verse to help express the emotions involved and suggest that Trench is using parkour as a cover for his growing paranoia. Back in present time Sydney, Dee is contacted by a mysterious camera guy known only as CG who organises further parkour activities that he films and posts on the internet. Dee is dazzled by possible international fame but his girlfriends research what happened and warn that CG is using very expensive, possibly military equipment and luring Dee into escapades that have him recorded on cctv security cameras. Dee recalls Trench’s paranoia but when the federal police arrive at his share flat, the pace of the action accelerates with chase and escape scenes that sometimes stretched my credibility but then again, the parkour that I have seen on video stretches my credibility anyway.
Readers aged 14 upwards will enjoy this very accessible and unusual verse novel that also explores the exhilaration of the sport and some of the more complex emotional motivations of those who move across the high night spaces. For those who have concerns about these things, the occasional four letter expletive is used, for example, when Dee learns that the federal police are on his case.
I wondered who Tim Sinclair was but now I've been to his goodreads page and remembered that he wrote Nine Hours North, many years a go. If you don't know this and especially if you're interested in Japan (nine hours flight time north)then here's another Tim Sinclair verse novel to enjoy. The implied reader is a little older and the characters are Australians, in their twenties working in Japan and being alternatively intrigued, mystified and annoyed by Japanese social norms.
Trench learnt parkour in Paris and teaches Dee. Here Sinclair varies the typography and also uses concrete or shaped verse to help express the emotions involved and suggest that Trench is using parkour as a cover for his growing paranoia. Back in present time Sydney, Dee is contacted by a mysterious camera guy known only as CG who organises further parkour activities that he films and posts on the internet. Dee is dazzled by possible international fame but his girlfriends research what happened and warn that CG is using very expensive, possibly military equipment and luring Dee into escapades that have him recorded on cctv security cameras. Dee recalls Trench’s paranoia but when the federal police arrive at his share flat, the pace of the action accelerates with chase and escape scenes that sometimes stretched my credibility but then again, the parkour that I have seen on video stretches my credibility anyway.
Readers aged 14 upwards will enjoy this very accessible and unusual verse novel that also explores the exhilaration of the sport and some of the more complex emotional motivations of those who move across the high night spaces. For those who have concerns about these things, the occasional four letter expletive is used, for example, when Dee learns that the federal police are on his case.
I wondered who Tim Sinclair was but now I've been to his goodreads page and remembered that he wrote Nine Hours North, many years a go. If you don't know this and especially if you're interested in Japan (nine hours flight time north)then here's another Tim Sinclair verse novel to enjoy. The implied reader is a little older and the characters are Australians, in their twenties working in Japan and being alternatively intrigued, mystified and annoyed by Japanese social norms.
May 5, 2013
A REMARKABLE combination of YA adventure fiction, literary prose (NOT rhyming); visually appealing typesetting and ACTION, ACTION, ACTION! I was hooked by the beautiful presentation of prose and almost 'shape' poetry; by the visual imagery of the typesetting and the vocabulary; and, for someone who is absolutely NOT into extreme sports, by the sheer movement of the main character and his passion for parkour.
A stunning novel that truly creates pictures in the mind of the reader and a must read for those who appreciate the passion of extreme sports.
This book made me want to get off the couch and get moving!
Clever plot, incredible weaving of multiple storylines, truly beautiful language!
4.5 stars
A stunning novel that truly creates pictures in the mind of the reader and a must read for those who appreciate the passion of extreme sports.
This book made me want to get off the couch and get moving!
Clever plot, incredible weaving of multiple storylines, truly beautiful language!
4.5 stars
June 22, 2014
It wouldn't be lying to say that I was completely blown away by this book. I was hoping to enjoy it, and I certainly had an idea of my mind of what it would be like before I read it, and it was so, so far what I was expecting, in the best possible way. I started reading on a whim, kind of in a I'll just see what this is like for a few chapters way, and I was instantly hooked. The talent on the Inkys longlist, especially the Aussie ones, is absolutely stupendous this year, and Run is no exception.
I was in something of a book rut before reading Run, and I really needed to read something different, and this novel was so refreshingly unique that it was precisely what I was needing. I'm a bit of a sucker for poetry, and I love the stories that it can tell, but I can't say I ever considered reading a novel written entirely in free verse. I think that telling the story in this manner worked entirely in Run's favour, as it really a brilliant job of conveying the sensation of exhilaration, falling and jumping. It was just very, very clever, and I doubt this story could have been told so effectively if had been written in normal prose.
There are moments when reading this book, it becomes a visual experience too, with some very smart and suitable formatting. There was just something quite perfect about Run, and it felt like all the elements had fallen right into place, and there was a gritty realism in the beautiful language of the story. The imagery was astounding, and the wording was so effective. Everything worked, and it made this an extremely enjoyable read.
Character relationships are a big thing for me, and those in Run, like the rest of the novel, didn't fail to disappoint. They all felt real and unforced, and I loved the emphasis on friendship, rather than an obligatory romance. The devotion that the characters had to each other was a treat to read, and, again, it all worked gorgeously. Even though they were introduced and presented in a totally different way to how characters usually would in novels, they seemed so realistic - the kind of people you could imagine running into. Dee's relationship with them all was a highlight, and their interactions seemed very natural and right for their personalities.
There's something really outstanding about this book, even if it didn't quite make me want to take up parkour for myself. There's a part of me that wants to run around throwing it at people and making them read it because it was so spectacular.
Run has possibly been the most impressive and surprising book I've read this year. An absolute standout that I wholeheartedly recommend!
I was in something of a book rut before reading Run, and I really needed to read something different, and this novel was so refreshingly unique that it was precisely what I was needing. I'm a bit of a sucker for poetry, and I love the stories that it can tell, but I can't say I ever considered reading a novel written entirely in free verse. I think that telling the story in this manner worked entirely in Run's favour, as it really a brilliant job of conveying the sensation of exhilaration, falling and jumping. It was just very, very clever, and I doubt this story could have been told so effectively if had been written in normal prose.
There are moments when reading this book, it becomes a visual experience too, with some very smart and suitable formatting. There was just something quite perfect about Run, and it felt like all the elements had fallen right into place, and there was a gritty realism in the beautiful language of the story. The imagery was astounding, and the wording was so effective. Everything worked, and it made this an extremely enjoyable read.
Character relationships are a big thing for me, and those in Run, like the rest of the novel, didn't fail to disappoint. They all felt real and unforced, and I loved the emphasis on friendship, rather than an obligatory romance. The devotion that the characters had to each other was a treat to read, and, again, it all worked gorgeously. Even though they were introduced and presented in a totally different way to how characters usually would in novels, they seemed so realistic - the kind of people you could imagine running into. Dee's relationship with them all was a highlight, and their interactions seemed very natural and right for their personalities.
There's something really outstanding about this book, even if it didn't quite make me want to take up parkour for myself. There's a part of me that wants to run around throwing it at people and making them read it because it was so spectacular.
Run has possibly been the most impressive and surprising book I've read this year. An absolute standout that I wholeheartedly recommend!
May 9, 2017
Read this two years ago.
Liked the rhythm and poetic format. Fast-paced and rushing with paranoia, the book was finished quickly.
Liked the rhythm and poetic format. Fast-paced and rushing with paranoia, the book was finished quickly.
January 25, 2018
I have just finished reading Run and my head hurts - I am not sure I was able to divert my attention for long enough to intake air during that last mission … towards the final quarter of the novel I realised that I could not tell whether author Tim Sinclair loved Dee enough to save his life, or would he let him rot in a horrible prison? (or worse)
I feel as though this story took me somewhere that I could never have gone on my own. I am not sure whether it is just towards the world of parkour, or towards the world of someone with such intense commitment - being somewhat flighty myself. It also occurred to me that had Tim tried to write in narrative prose, we'd have lagged behind the movement - a fully formed sentence can't jump over buildings, climb a wall and spring up a drain in real time. It could never have taken me into this world.
I adored how much of the novel is about friendship, mistakes, missed opportunities. My heart aches for some of the people I met within these pages - life is so tough sometimes and we're not spared that. The design - so important, so magical. I loved the space on the page. The reader is right there, inside the thought. How clever! I hope we won't have to wait too long for his next book.
I feel as though this story took me somewhere that I could never have gone on my own. I am not sure whether it is just towards the world of parkour, or towards the world of someone with such intense commitment - being somewhat flighty myself. It also occurred to me that had Tim tried to write in narrative prose, we'd have lagged behind the movement - a fully formed sentence can't jump over buildings, climb a wall and spring up a drain in real time. It could never have taken me into this world.
I adored how much of the novel is about friendship, mistakes, missed opportunities. My heart aches for some of the people I met within these pages - life is so tough sometimes and we're not spared that. The design - so important, so magical. I loved the space on the page. The reader is right there, inside the thought. How clever! I hope we won't have to wait too long for his next book.
July 17, 2016
I read this because it is a prose novel and I wanted to see how that would work. it isn't a subject I would normally choose though I would call it young adult fiction which is a category, when well written, that I enjoy. By well written I mean according to my standards, which are basically the same as those I apply to adult and a children's fiction ie engaging story, consistency, believable and engaging characters, and (most of all!) succeeds in suspending reality for me. It satisfied all of these so I could keep part of my mind free to look at how the prose novel concept worked. It was not brilliant but it introduced me to parkour, which I found fascinating. Purely by accident the fact that parkour played a major role in the story was particularly suited to a prose frame in that parkour with its concentration on intense, physical freedom in movement and the rigid framework of balance and energy and being able to let go of fear fitted the jerkier and intensely focussed nature of the prose style. Both parkour and the prose novel are tightly disciplined and within that discipline attain great freedom.
July 2, 2014
Average book, but I did enjoy the way Sinclair used the literary verse way to express his story and to follow the story line. I thought it ended really well and I liked that it was set in Sydney of course. I mean seriously.
So basically this book tells the story of Dee (nickname) who has a pretty boring life and is pretty much a social outcast. who lives for parkour. He is roped into dangerous activity and risky situations. i ENJOYED THE BOOK. but it's content wasnt really my cup of tea. But definitely worth a read.
You have to start running towards, not away from the difficulties in life.
So basically this book tells the story of Dee (nickname) who has a pretty boring life and is pretty much a social outcast. who lives for parkour. He is roped into dangerous activity and risky situations. i ENJOYED THE BOOK. but it's content wasnt really my cup of tea. But definitely worth a read.
You have to start running towards, not away from the difficulties in life.
May 21, 2013
Run by Tim Sinclair is a literary novel concentrating on an extreme sport called parkour. I appreciate the writing style and the subject matter but could only push myself through to halfway through the book. I can't see that an adventure loving reader who likes action would take the time to read poetry verse in this form. I hope I am wrong. It is a sophisticated read, not enough reviews on this site for me to appreciate what others think of this style and subject.
April 10, 2014
I met Tim Sinclair at Reading Matters in Melbourne last year. He told me that "Run" was a novel with "30% less words, but all the action". I have used this quote to recommend it to reluctant teenage readers, with much success. The adrenaline-fueled storyline assists, naturally. This book opened my eyes to verse novels, and for that I am grateful. Words used sparingly can be even more beautiful. Please, Tim, write more, soon!
October 31, 2013
YA verse novel, parkour thriller set in Sydney. I really liked his use of words to paint a picture-
I move quickly over sandstone
With its soft graffiti love,
names preserved far longer
than the passion that carved them there,
History imprinted all around me.
And his use of text to catch the flow of movement.
I move quickly over sandstone
With its soft graffiti love,
names preserved far longer
than the passion that carved them there,
History imprinted all around me.
And his use of text to catch the flow of movement.
June 4, 2013
Although I didn't know anything about parkour, I still enjoyed this thriller. Good to see the computer hacker is a girl
October 13, 2014
Great Sydney spikes good for boys teen
November 6, 2015
A great thriller set in Sydney's inner suburbs. The verse novel format is perfectly suited for the gripping parkour action.
Nice use of concrete poetry throughout!
Nice use of concrete poetry throughout!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews