27 September 2024
Bagedai are a band from the Chinese province of Yunnan who blend traditional Wa music with reggae, creating accessible but intriguingly different rock music featuring five powerful female singers backed by electric guitars and drums alongside traditional Chinese instruments. Their self-titled debut album manages to sound both surprising and familiar - eerie and upbeat. Listen at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nSEgjqTSv6xIZ6KNJDhj__gojqlAeU2CE
20 September 2024
Having spent most of my working life in endless discussions about the value, relevance and definitions of ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’, I have long had a soft spot for the composer Charles Ives. Ives (1874-1954) was a symphonist, a prolific writer of songs and an innovative modernist whose departure from traditional tonal harmony echoed his contemporary Arnold Schoenberg. Ives’ works also managed to incorporate elements of American folk music, jazz, and marching band music. He is now regarded as the most important American composer of his generation - admired by Gustav Mahler and championed by Leonard Bernstein. But Charles Ives was most definitely an amateur composer, continuing his day job as an insurance broker while composing at the weekends - not for financial necessity but because he was very good at insurance brokering and chose to keep music as his hobby. As we approach Ives’ 150th anniversary (on 20 October) I have been reading a lot about him and listening again to his symphonies (I would recommend Gustavo Dudamel’s 2020 recording of the Complete Symphonies with the Los Angeles Philharmonic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbmjAg00BzE&list=PLEhQ5Ooc2lLrR9KGN26CYBwF0fz_fACld). And this episode of BBC Radio 3’s ‘The Listening Service’ from June 2023 provides a great introduction to ‘All American Ives’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n25z
13 September 2024
This week I visited ‘Come As You Really Are’, Hetain Patel's exhibition as part of the ArtAngel project ‘The Hobby Cave’, in which Creative Lives is a partner. Located in Grant's, a former department store in Croydon, this celebration of the nation's hobbies is a miraculous treasure trove of the bizarre, inspiring, heart-warming, nostalgic and peculiar. Although there's plenty of craft and art on display, the exhibition seems dominated by collections, exploring the creative act of curation, from a case containing Kit Kat branded merchandise to a full wall display of vintage plastic carrier bags to a slightly creepy small room packed with My Little Pony toys.
This is a strange and wondrous array of how people choose to spend their spare time and their creative energy. The exhibition is beautifully displayed and arranged. It makes you feel like you're following a weird treasure-hunt trail through a darkened forest or exploring Willy Wonka's abandoned chocolate factory. Indeed, there's one glass case full of pebbles painted to resemble classic chocolate bars.
It's an exhibition you could return to many times: there are so many tiny hidden delights in each corner. But it's a very idiosyncratic, slightly unnerving experience, like walking through somebody else's dream. Hetain Patel is remarkably respectful, and clearly enthralled by, the pieces contributed by people from across the UK, never ridiculing or mocking and presenting every endeavour with equal prominence. It was great to see so many people wandering around the free exhibition. Everyone we spoke to thought it was wonderful: it was all smiles and gasps of excitement. ‘Come As You Really Are’ is a unique and amazing experience, hard to do justice to in words. Bizarre, impressive, life-affirming and joyous. The exhibition is in Croydon until 20 October and you can book free tickets at: https://artangel.org.uk/project/come-as-you-really-are/
13 September 2024
Last Saturday we were at the London Palladium to see ‘Hello Dolly’ starring Imelda Staunton. Jerry Herman’s 1964 musical is one I'm not at all familiar with: I had not previously seen it, nor the 1969 film with Barbara Streisand. And I think the only song I knew was the title track. It's a really enjoyable old-fashioned screwball comedy musical, genuinely funny and a great showpiece with a brilliant headlining role for the eponymous matchmaker. Based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce ‘The Merchant of Yonkers’ (later revised by Wilder as ‘The Matchmaker’, it tells the story of a New York widow Dolly Levi who mischievously engineers unions between unsuspecting eligible suitors while beginning to look for a later-in-life profitable union for herself. This production, directed by Dominic Cooke, who also directed Imelda Staunton in the great National Theatre production of Follies, reviewed here in November 2017), is a joyous celebration of song and dance on the big Palladium stage. Rae Smith’s set, featuring a moving sidewalk along which the characters process, as well as full-size trolleybuses and trains, is lots of fun. There is a large cast and brilliant choreography by Bill Deamer. Andy Nyman is great as the grumpy businessman at the heart of the matchmaking intrigue, and Jenna Russell, Tyrone Huntley and Harry Hepple also impress with Emily Langham stealing most of her scenes with her comically miserable sobbing. But this is Imelda Staunton's show and she is magnificent. Her rapturous reception and genuine standing ovation showed a true warmth from the packed audience for the musical leading lady who can't put a foot wrong.
6 September 2024
This week I've been very much enjoying listening to the music of Ida Moberg, a Finnish composer (1859-1947), who was a direct contemporary of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), but was a new discovery for me. Like many female composers of the period her music remains largely unknown and underappreciated. Moberg studied composition at the Orchestra School of the Helsinki Philharmonic Society where her teachers included Sibelius. She became particularly interested in understanding music through movement. I've been listening to her 'Sunrise Orchestral Suite', a beautiful four-movement piece which builds from the gentle strings of the sunrise, through the activity of the day, to the evening and finishing in stillness. You can listen to the lovely 'Sunrise Orchestral Suite' at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-8xrak2p_E&list=OLAK5uy_nuS5_Y-zZpC_WQmLnBO01zuhvY-hj-6k8&index=5
29 August 2024
Our visit to the Edinburgh Festivals last week was the 30th anniversary of our first trip there in 1994. We haven't been every year but I think we've now done the festivals at least 20 times. As always, our 2024 visit was brilliant and exhausting: we saw 22 shows in four and a half days in a total of 17 different venues. In the Edinburgh International Festival we were at the Usher Hall to see the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra (who we last saw in Edinburgh in 2016, reviewed here in September 2016) conducted by Thierry Fischer, playing the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss. This was the first time I've seen a performance of the symphony since I played it with the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in 2019 (reviewed here in June 2019). We also went to the opening night of 'Assembly Hall' at the Festival Theatre - an intriguing mixture of drama and dance performed by the Kidd Pivot company, directed and choreographed by Crystal Pite and written by Jonathon Young. 'Assembly Hall' shows a group of medieval battle re-enactors gathering for their Annual General Meeting in a crumbling community hall. As the group start to argue about whether to disband or continue, the argument morphs into a vicious battle, complete with swords and armour. It's a peculiar, beautiful, funny and puzzling piece of theatre, with the dancers syncing exaggerated movement to the recorded dialogue to indicate which character is speaking. Crystal Pite uses the dancers to create some stunning tableaux and mesmerising effects but we found it difficult to completely follow what was going on. We really enjoyed another chance to see the philosopher Julian Baggini at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, this time speaking about his new book 'How the World Eats: A Global Food Philosophy'. In the Edinburgh Festival Fringe our favourite shows included 'Nation' written and performed by Sam Ward - a clever and disturbing tale about a town gripped by fear and hatred, which reminded us of the unsettling theatre made by Tim Crouch (such as 'The Author', reviewed here in September 2010). We also loved 'Same Team' by Robbie Gordon and Jack Nurse at the Traverse Theatre - a funny, moving and inspiring play about a women's football team from Scotland playing in the Homeless World Cup which was told by five actors in a style reminiscent of John Godber's plays for the Hull Truck Theatre company (such as 'Teechers', reviewed here in September 2010). And once again I am grateful to Kelly for her brilliant Fringe recommendations which included the wonderful 'Sawdust Symphony' a bizarre but strangely beautiful circus piece from Germany that was essentially live woodwork - the sort of thing you could only see at the Edinburgh Fringe. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uThKVDvZqCY
15 August 2024
It is 16 years since we saw 'Pericles Redux' at the Edinburgh Fringe - an amazing production of Shakespeare's play by physical theatre ensemble Not Man Apart (reviewed here in August 2008) but I still fondly remember that performance. And until last weekend that was the only time I had seen this rarely performed play. On Saturday we were at the Swan Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon to see Tamara Harvey’s new RSC production of ‘Pericles’. ‘Pericles’ is Shakespeare doing Homer, an epic story set in ancient Greece involving numerous sea voyages and almost as many shipwrecks. It’s not a great play: much of the opening two acts feel more like a series of tableaus with a narrator. But I hadn’t realised it is widely believed that ‘Pericles’ was co-written with George Wilkins and that it seems he wrote the opening parts. The second half of the play certainly felt more Shakespearean and built towards a moving ending. The RSC production was very impressive, with Alfred Enoch as Pericles and Rachelle Doedericks as Marina standing out. And Christian Patterson was very funny as Simonides (played with more than a hint of Brian Blessed).
9 August 2024
When it launched in 2016 ‘Stranger Things’ - the Duffer Brothers’ homage to 1980s sci-fi/horror films - was the first big breakout hit made by the Netflix streaming platform. I loved ‘Stranger Things’ (reviewed here in August 2016 and November 2017) so I was excited to learn that the new stage version of the show was to premiere in London’s West End. Last Saturday we were at the Phoenix Theatre to see ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ written by Kate Trefry from an original story by the Duffer Brothers, Jack Thorne and Kate Trefry, directed by Stephen Daldry. When it opened last year the play got a glowing 5-star review in The Guardian but only 2-stars in The Times: I felt it sat somewhere between these extremes. It is certainly a spectacular theatrical experience which starts with a stunning opening scene set on a US Navy ship in 1943, showing off the amazing set design by Miriam Buether, lighting by Jon Clark, (deafening) sound by Paul Arditti and visual effects by Jamie Harrison, Chris Fisher and 59 Productions. After this prologue the action of the play is set in 1959, acting as a prequel to the TV series and featuring some of the adult characters in the original (including Joyce and Hopper) as teenagers. Deciding to base the stage version around the preparations for a high school drama production was a nice idea but ended up feeling like a distraction from the main plot. And focusing purely on teenage characters lost some of the charm and humour of the gang of younger children who were the main protagonists of the TV series. Like the later episodes of season 4 ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ was incredibly long (more than 3 hours) and very loud. The stage effects were jaw dropping but tended to squeeze out the plot and acting. This is definitely a show for existing fans: it was noticeable that the biggest cheer from the audience was for the first appearance of the ‘Stranger Things’ theme tune and credit sequence.
31 July 2024
The 2024 WOMAD Festival, at Charlton Park near Malmesbury in Wiltshire, took place over a gloriously sunny weekend. I saw 17 full performances and sampled many more, seeing artists from countries including Brazil, Bulgaria, India, Mongolia, Morocco, Taiwan, Tanzania and Tibet.
It was fascinating to see the Bhutan Balladeers at the Taste the World Stage, demonstrating how to cook a traditional Bhutanese curry (containing a massive bowl of chillies which they told us was half the amount they would normally use!) while singing traditional religious songs written in a language that nobody in Bhutan now speaks. None of the members of the band had ever been out of Bhutan before (and had never previously been on a plane) but they were wonderful ambassadors for this small, remote Himalayan country which has a population of around 800,000.
I was intrigued to see Sangjaru, a trio from South Korea who claimed to stitch together the swing of gypsy jazz with the folk traditions of their Korean homeland. They turned out to be even more eccentric than their description suggested, and great fun - though a little less gipsy jazz than I had hoped.
The Pankisi Ensemble are Cechens from Eastern Georgia - four women singing in achingly beautiful scrunchy harmonies. They were clearly more used to formal recitals than outdoor festivals but the rapturous reception they received from a packed crowd seemed to relax them and they began to smile and even offered an occasional dance move.
I really enjoyed Saigon Soul Revival, from Vietnam, and their very cool take on 60s psychedelia. But my favourite moment of this year's WOMAD was the performance by Duo Ruut - two Estonian women who have invented a completely new way to play the traditional Estonian plucked zither. Rather than sitting with the zither on the lap, the two of them stand facing each other across the instrument (on a high stand) and jointly pluck, bow and strum the single instrument (a bit like a four-handed piano piece) while singing into microphones placed above the zither. They perform their own, beautiful contemporary compositions. And, much like the Estonian zombie-folk duo Puuluup, who I saw at last year's WOMAD Festival (reviewed here in August 2023) Duo Ruut's patter between the songs was genuinely hilarious - and reinforced the idea that the only thing Estonians sing about is the weather! Fortunately WOMAD 2024 had near perfect weather.
You can see a selection of my photos from WOMAD 2024 at: https://culturaloutlook.blogspot.com/search/label/WOMAD2024
25 July 2024
On Saturday we were back at the London Stadium in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London for the Diamond League London Athletics Meet. We were part of a crowd of 60,000 watching some of the top athletes in the world in their final warm-up for the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. As at last year’s London Athletics Meet (reviewed here in July 2023), the stand-out performance was Femke Bol of the Netherlands in the Women's 400m Hurdles who looks on course both to win the Olympic title and to break the world record. Among the British Olympic hopefuls, Keely Hodgkinson ran the fastest 800m time since Caster Semenya in 2018, with Jemma Reekie and Georgia Bell making a British 1-2-3. And Matthew Hudson-Smith beat his own European 400m record to move to the top of the world rankings. It’s going to be interesting to watch them all compete in Paris.
19 July 2024
The Northampton Symphony Orchestra Friends Concert is always a lovely end-of-season party. Last Sunday the NSO gave Callie Rich, Callie Scully, Ian Jones and me the opportunity to reprise our performance of the 'Konzertstück for four Horns' by Heinrich Hübler which we first played with the orchestra in our concert in Grantham last year (reviewed here in November 2023). It’s a fun piece and we really enjoyed ourselves. The concert also featured a brilliant young flute soloist from Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts trust playing the first movement of the ‘Flute Concerto’ by Carl Nielsen - a fiendishly difficult piece beautifully performed, which also included impressive solos by Kate Bradshaw on bass trombone and Christine Kelk on clarinet. We opened the concert with ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ Overture by Otto Nicolai and also played the Intermezzo from 'Fennimore And Gerda' by Frederick Delius which featured lovely solos from Helen Taylor (flute) and Harriet Brown (oboe). We finished with Hamish MacCunn’s ‘The Land of the Mountain and the Flood’ concert overture. It was a very enjoyable concert and a lovely way to say thank you to the Friends of the Orchestra at the end of our 2023-24 season.
19 July 2024
In 2006 we saw 35 minutes of Kim Clijsters’ opening match on Number One Court at Wimbledon before spending 5 hours sheltering from the rain (reviewed here in June 2006). So last Saturday felt like long-awaited closure as we returned to Number One Court (with the retractable roof remaining open) to see Kim Clijsters win her match in the Ladies Invitation Doubles, playing with Martina Hingis against Sam Stosur and Cara Black. We had seen Martina Hingis playing in the Invitation draw in 2011, when she was barely old enough to be considered a senior player (reviewed here in June 2011) and it was lovely to see her still going strong 13 years later. We were also treated to a brilliantly entertaining Mens Invitation Doubles match between Bob and Mike Bryan & James Blake and Bruno Soares. We had previously seen the Bryan brothers win two of their Wimbledon Men's Doubles titles (reviewed here in July 2009 and July 2013) and, in retirement, they are still a formidable partnership. But this was a much less serious match, with some great clowning by all four players, all the more funny because of the incredible power and speed they brought to the trick shots and endless rapid-fire rallies at the net.
19 July 2024
When we took our seats at the outdoor Roman Theatre of Verulamium in St Albans the Saturday before last we were hopeful that we had avoided the predicted showers. But just before the show was due to start the sky darkened and an incredibly loud rumble of thunder was followed by a brief but torrential downpour. And, because of the potential dangers from an electrical storm, the performance was then delayed by 20 minutes while we sat in our wet clothes! Fortunately that was the worst of the rain and we were then able to enjoy the joint Pitlochry Festival Theatre and OVO Theatre production of ‘Sense and Sensibility’ by Jane Austen, adapted by Frances Poet. Like previous OVO productions we have seen at Verulamium (such as 'Much Ado About Nothing', reviewed here in July 2023 and 'The Importance of Being Earnest', reviewed here in July 2022) the scenes were interspersed with versions of modern pop songs - here sung in impressive harmony by the cast. But in ‘Sense and Sensibility’ this quirky insertion of songs by Beyoncé, Olivia Rodrigo and Sophie Ellis-Bextor felt out of keeping with what was otherwise a fairly straight, well-acted, period dramatisation. Nevertheless it was an enjoyable performance with Kirsty Findlay and Lola Aluko impressing as the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne.
2 July 2024
For a horn player, the chance to play one of the symphonies of Anton Bruckner is a rare treat. During my time as a member of the Northampton Symphony Orchestra I’ve now been lucky enough to play the first horn part in three Bruckner symphonies: No 6 (reviewed here in March 2015), No 4 (reviewed here in February 2020) and No 7 which we performed at St Matthew's Church in Northampton last Saturday. Bruckner’s 7th symphony requires at least 8 horn players rather than the usual 4: for our performance there were 10 of us, including 3 former NSO members and 2 friends from Milton Keynes Sinfonia. Four of my colleagues played the Wagner tubas which feature in the wondrous slow movement and the dramatic finale. Their beautiful second movement quartet was particularly splendid, with Ian Jones’ melody gently soaring above the gorgeous harmonies. Bruckner 7 is a big work, comprising more than an hour of abstract orchestral music with no story to guide the listener through it. But it’s not difficult to listen to if you immerse yourself in it. As with all Bruckner’s symphonies there is beauty, glory and brilliance, tempered by humility and moments of unexpected gentleness. NSO conductor John Gibbons cleverly shaped our performance, resisting the temptation to over-romanticise by pulling the tempos about (as many recordings of the symphony do) and maintaining a steady pulsing momentum that let the music’s emotions reveal themselves. John managed to draw a stunning performance of this mammoth, challenging piece from the orchestra, with the endings of each of the four movements creating magical moments of breath-holding silence. The NSO as a whole seemed to rise to the challenge - even those players who are not such Bruckner fans - but, as I said after both of my previous experiences of playing Bruckner symphonies with NSO, mostly it was about the horns!
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| The NSO horn section for Bruckner Symphony No 7 |
The concert opened with Alexander Borodin’s ‘Prince Igor Overture’ which features some of the same tunes as the better-known ‘Polovtsian Dances’ and included a brilliant clarinet solo by Naomi Muller and a lovely horn solo by Ian Jones.
We also played Amy Beach’s ‘Piano Concerto’ with the amazing young pianist Julian Chan. The concerto, which was premiered in 1900 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra with the composer as the soloist, was the first piano concerto written by an American woman. It’s a big, dramatic, romantic piece in four movements that deserves to be much better-known. Julian Chan, who joined us last year to play Saint-Saens’ ‘Piano Concerto No 5’ (reviewed here in February 2023) learned the Amy Beach concerto specifically for our concert but gave the impression it had been in his repertoire for years. The lush sprawling piano chords of the lengthy first movement, the gentle clockwork perpetuum mobile piano notes throughout the second movement and the Chopinesque playfulness of the fourth movement were all brilliantly executed. It’s a lovely concerto - and it was a wonderful concert to mark the end of Emily Groom’s tenure as the orchestra’s leader.
Emily joined NSO in 2021, leading the orchestra in our first concert following the Covid-19 lockdowns in October 2021. Her many contributions to our concerts have included beautiful violin solos in 'Symphony No 9' by Ralph Vaughan Williams (reviewed here in October 2022), Rimsky Korsakov’s ‘Scheherazade’ (reviewed here in February 2023) and Beethoven’s ‘Romance for violin and orchestra No. 2 in F major’ (reviewed here in July 2023). Many thanks Emily and all best wishes for the future.
27 June 2024
I discovered the thriller writer Gillian McAllister in 2022 and really enjoyed her novels ‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’ (reviewed here July 2022) and ‘How to Disappear’ (reviewed here in January 2023). I have just finished reading her 2021 book ‘That Night’ which is another clever, twisty, tense, family thriller. This time Gillian McAllister challenges us to ponder how we would respond if a beloved sibling needed our help to cover up a crime. Like Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’ this is one of those stories where one mistake mushrooms, as each small act to try to rectify the situation makes it exponentially worse. And each lie told requires more lies to back it up, to the point that it is hard to remember what is real. ‘That Night’ is a cleverly constructed novel that plays tricks with the reader as it recounts events through the point of view of different family members, alternating timelines between ‘then’ (the initial crime and its aftermath) and ‘now’. There are some bold twists, carefully disguised. And Gillian McAllister is brilliant at making you both scared to keep reading but unable to put the book down.
27 June 2024
On Saturday we were back at the Priory Club in Edgbaston, Birmingham, for the first time since our 2017 visit (reviewed here in June 2017) to see the semi-finals of the Rothesay Classic Birmingham Tennis Tournament. Compared to Queen’s Club in London (where we were the previous week), Edgbaston has a more intimate atmosphere and we were much closer to the action. It was a lovely sunny day and, although all four matches we saw were decided in straight sets, they were all more competitive than this suggests. The two ladies singles semi-finals saw Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan defeat the Italian Eilsabetta Cocciaretto, and Ajla Tomljanović of Australia beat Anastasia Potapova in a close-fought tussle. The ladies doubles semi-finals were both very entertaining. Eventual champions Belgian Elise Mertens and Su-Wei Hsieh from Taiwan trounced Asia Muhammed and Aldila Sutjiadi. The best match of the day was Miyu Kato and Shuai Zhang narrowly beating the third seeds Marie Bouzkova and Sara Sorribes Tormo. We also saw Shuai Zhang win her doubles semi-final last time we were at the Edgbaston tournament in 2017.
21 June 2024
After enjoying our first trip to the Queen’s Club in London in 2019 (reviewed here in June 2019), our plans to return were hampered by Covid but this Monday we made our second visit on the opening day of the cinch Championships Tennis Tournament 2024. It was a gloriously sunny day and we watched more than 8 hours of tennis on Centre Court. The best match was an upset win for the Australian player Jordan Thompson over the number 7 seed Holger Rune from Denmark in 3 sets. The match between Britain’s Cameron Norrie and Milos Raonic of Canada also went the distance with Raonic winning an epic final set tie break. This provided a thrilling finish to what was otherwise a strangely dull match with a fairly flat atmosphere. That might have been because we saw Raonic serve 47 aces, breaking the ATP Tour world record, but this made for a lot of very short points. The first match we saw was a fairly routine straight sets win for the Bulgarian number 3 seed Grigor Dimitrov over Adrian Mannarino of France. Sadly the last match of the day - a really entertaining encounter between Alejandro Tabilo of Chile and the Spanish player Alejandro Davidovich Fokina - was suspended because the courts were becoming too slippery as the evening wore on. Nevertheless we had a great day at Queen’s.
14 June 2024
I am grateful to Jess for recommending ‘Tokyo Express’ - a Japanese detective novel by Seichō Matsumoto, first published in 1958, and translated by Jesse Kirkwood in 2022. It’s an intriguing Hitchcockian mystery set in 1950s Japan which revolves almost entirely around the careful reading of railway timetables. The puzzle faced by the police is gripping and the tale is beautifully told, with a gentle Japanese politeness. The detectives are sympathetically drawn characters and you really feel you are working with them to unpick a seemingly impossible chain of events. I did get a little confused by the Japanese place names: I should have referred more to the map of Japan while reading the book. But it’s a lovely novel.
6 June 2024
Having really enjoyed the first five of Mick Herron’s Slough House series of spy novels (all reviewed here between November 2023 and May 2024) I've now finished the final three books in the series. 'Joe Country' is a dark, violent tale that takes the slow horses to snowy Pembrokeshire (which, as everyone keeps pedantically pointing out, is in Wales). 'Slough House' is a brilliantly plotted story with a devastating sting in the tail that completely surprised me, but with hindsight was hinted at throughout the book. The final novel 'Bad Actors' is the most ambitious, with an initially confusing jump forward in time from the previous book very satisfyingly resolved by a hilarious farcical flashback set-piece. And Mick Herron is both bold enough to leave many of the key characters out of the climax to the series and indulgent enough to add a postscript chapter to bring the gang back together.
6 June 2024
The novels of Ann Patchett have been one of my best recent discoveries. I loved 'Bel Canto' (reviewed here in December 2023) and 'State of Wonder' (reviewed here in January 2024). I've now finished reading her 2007 novel 'Run'. This is a family story about adopted children, social status and race, which reminded me of the great contemporary American novelist Anne Tyler. I've written here many times about Anne Tyler's understated masterpieces - which never stray far from Baltimore and focus almost exclusively on domestic family life but still manage to say so much about the world. Ann Patchett's 'Run' is set in Boston, Massachusetts, and the story is provoked by a traumatic accident which made me read the rest of the novel nervously awaiting further tragedy to strike. But this is mostly a gentle, thoughtful exploration of family relationships in which all the characters are lovely - often flawed but gentle, sympathetic and understanding. 'Run' is less of a thriller than the other Ann Patchett novels I have read but it's equally well written and a very heartwarming tale.
