A New York Times Editor's Choice
A "Most Anticipated Book of 2017" Selection by The Millions
One of Entertainment Weekly's "Best New Books"
One of Esquire's "Best Books of 2017"
Autostraddle's Queer and Feminist Books to read in 2017
From the critically acclaimed author of Be Safe I Love You comes a dark and breathtaking novel of love, friendship, and survival set in the red light district of Athens in the 1980s that Garth Greenwell calls “a ferocious, brilliant book.”
Dark and Incendiary, Running is a sweeping and fearless story of friendship and survival from Cara Hoffman, An author whose work the New York Times says "Reminds us art and love are all that can keep s from despair."
Praise for Running:
“Gritty. … Hoffman writes like a dream—a disturbing, emotionally charged dream that resolves into a surprisingly satisfying and redemptive vision.”
“Hoffman impressively evokes the combination of nihilism, idealism, rootlnessness, psychic and economic necessity, lust and love that might set a young person adrift. Unlike the runaway heroes of many queer narratives these characters are not cast out but looking to get lost...The Athens on display here is peopled with rebels and runaways of all kinds, idealists, revolutionary operatives, con men, wayward young scholars, squatters...In Bridey and Milo Hoffman has created memorable anti-heroes: tough and resourceful scarred, feral and sexy. The book and the characters refuse to conform and Running like all good outlaw literature takes sharp aim at the contemporary culture’s willingness to do so.”
“Hoffman’s haunting, original narrative weaves a gauzy portrait of youthful longing, sticky romance, and regret.”
“Haunting...beneath the deceptive lyricism of her prose, Cara Hoffman has long shown a healthy fascination with upending the social order...Her observations have the keen immediacy of lived scenes, similar to drawings sketched from life. ”
“Running creeps towards a page-turning finale that shocks while provoking important questions about feminism and violence in the Western world. ”
“genius...Running has plenty of dazzle; it races atop remarkable sentences.”
“Explores the lingering echoes of our young, passionate friendships through time.”
“Cara Hoffman has already become revered for her craft. [Running] is graceful, understated, remarkably complex... alluring from start to finish. ”
“Hoffman is fearless and trusting of her readers, and her precise prose captures the novel’s many settings—Greece, Washington State, New York City—and her characters’ feelings and actions, vividly.”
“ Crisp and immediate...so beautiful and atmospheric that it sometimes feels as though it’s happening behind a screen. A haunting novel, original and deeply sad. ”
“Acclaimed journalist and novelist Hoffman perfectly depicts two very different lives in her new novel...The poetic way Hoffman describes their drunkenness and squalor and their complex relationship is one of the main draws...[a] fascinating mix of youth, violence, and romantic and familial relations...a beautiful read. ”
“Running is Hoffman’s third novel, and she has great control over her craft. The deft handling of the two non-linear narratives, as well as between the perspectives of Milo and Bridey, underscore her storytelling powers. And this alternation is what gives the book its exciting rhythm, reading almost like a mystery novel in some places. ”
“Cara Hoffman’s third novel “Running” shines...elegant and virtuosic.”
“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 with them, and with this ferocious, brilliant book.”
— Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
“Reading this novel was a conversion experience—I was immediately with the narrator, and I didn’t care where we were going, every sentence lit up with silver rain and smoke and the beauty of arriving in a foreign city and the defiance of needing almost nothing—and how strangely impossible it is when you lose that. Running is like taking a trip into a story you never knew you needed—and you should take it, at once.”
— Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh and Queen of the Night
“RUNNING is an unstoppable spark racing along a fuse. There is no escaping the heat, grime, or glittering promise of violence of Athens’s 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.”
“We were looking for nothing and found it in Athens.”
Bridey Sullivan is a young American who has fled a peculiar and traumatic upbringing in Washington State. Searching for a new beginning, she arrives in Athens, Greece, in 1989, and quickly finds work as a “runner,” riding trains looking for tourists to lure back to the four-dollar-a night Hotel Olympos in exchange for a small commission and a free place to stay. There, she meets a queer couple, English poet Milo Rollack and Eton dropout Jasper Lethe. As the trio “run” trains, slip in and out of homelessness, and drink away their meager earnings in seedy corner bars, they form a unique kind of family. But when they befriend an IRA fugitive, they become inextricably linked to an act of terrorism that will mark each of them for life and force them apart.
Soon after, Bridey reemerges but no one has fared well in her absence; Milo has disappeared and Jasper has died mysteriously. The news drives her from the streets of Athens’ red-light district to the remote island cliff houses of the southern Mediterranean, hoping to find answers, and seeking an impossible absolution. As the years pass, Milo, now a successful writer and professor, searches for her, equally haunted by the secret of their past and struggling to live ethically in a world he knows is corrupt.