Spoiler-Free Summary:
Our main character,
Jerome Esterson is an idealistic and wealthy young man who, to put it simply,
wants things that are not "conventional." I put it in quotes because
honestly, the things he wants are what a lot of people want, or think they want,
or would want if there were no rules: threesomes, underage babes, violence
without consequence. Eric is a force, brimming with raw and primal urges. He
rallies against domesticity and monogamy - any mention of suburban life makes
him sick. He uses his natural talents in persuasion and public speaking to
spread his controversial message. He builds up a reputation, aids some
companies with his PR prowess, and meets some tempting women (and some tempting
technology), in the process. All throughout, Jerome is honing his body into a
killing machine, but to what end? Jerome pushes all those around him to their
social limits while he pushes himself toward madness.
.....
And then Run was not my favorite book.
However, this was a
deviance from the typical genres I read, so that may be playing a part in my
inability to grasp the motives and meaning of this novel.
I think the easiest,
kindest way to write this review would be to split it into some well-defined
sections: Things I Appreciated, and Things I Didn't.
Things I Appreciated
- I enjoyed the skepticism of
Jerome. His assessments of social norms were often witty.
- I liked the honesty he provided
us concerning the world of business, marketing, Hollywood, and crime. For
example, he continually referred to mainstream movies and romance novels
as "Monogamy Commercials," which made me smile.
- Jerome lived in the modern
world. He played video games I've heard of, watched movies I've watched,
and read books I've read. This inclusion added some context to the story
and made it scarier/more thought-provoking. I could relate to Jerome,
despite him being a psychopath and all.
- The erotic bits got better as
the book went on, which ties into....
Things I Didn't
- The erotic portions of this
novel were not very erotic to me. Perhaps I am jaded. However, the last
few sexual encounters in the book contain a fair bit more detail, which, I
think helped out a bit. I never really found any of them realistic or
interesting, though. Then again, I don't read erotica.
- The first 90% of this novel
literally just felt like dialog. Jerome seems to spend most of his time
engaged in long discourses with his cocky friends, fights with his
unbelievably horrible girlfriend(s) (see the below bullet point...), or,
get this, giving speeches. It felt like Jerome was only giving speeches in
order to tell us more about his boring, "edgy" views. It felt
like characters like Madison existed only to give him an excuse to rant.
These all came off like cheap tricks. At times, I got the impression that
Hublot was unsure how to show us how characters other than Jerome felt or
acted without giving it to us in straight dialog. Some might enjoy this
and interpret it as a stylistic choice, but, I found it boring and slow. I
guess I would have liked this novel a bit better, if, instead of just
giving us giant scripts of the characters' interactions, we got to see
more of their physical reactions and nuances, and Jerome's reactions to
these more subtle displays.
- As I said above, certain
characters, especially female characters, seemed only to exist to give
Jerome an excuse to rant and be angry about things. Madison was so
one-dimensional and horrible that I doubted she existed from the start. I
thought, surely, that she was some weird Fight Club-ian projection
of Jerome's psyche. But, unfortunately, I don't think she was. Every time
Jerome would speak, Madison would start screaming and crying. This was
frustrating because 1) Jerome is funny. He has plenty of witty
observations. Why does a smart, scholarly girl like Madison have
absolutely no sense of humor? 2) We are meant to believe that Madison and
Jerome have wanted each other for a long time, yet they act like this?
Have they really hid their true selves from each other for this long? 3)
If Madison hated him so much, why didn't she just leave? She's not very
empowered or strong-willed, despite being educated. She knows that her
opinion matters and that what Jerome is doing is wrong, but refuses to do
anything but bitch. This applies to all of Jerome's girlfriends. They are
all just varying shades of bitchy.
I read elsewhere (but I
forget where...) that this book came off as American Psycho meets Fight
Club meets The Great Gatsby. A combination such as this has
potential, but, it just wasn't executed in a way I could appreciate.
That being said, I have
no doubt that there are people out there who will adore this novel and find it
disturbing and thought-provoking.
Buy And Then Run now at Amazon, in Kindle E-book format or in paperback.
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