THE LONG RUN

A Memoir of Loss and Life In Motion


An unlikely marathoner finds her way through grief and into the untold history of women and running. Thirty-year-old Catriona Menzies-Pike defined herself in many ways: voracious reader, pub crawler, feminist, backpacker, and, since her parents’ deaths a decade earlier, orphan. “Runner” was nowhere near the list. Yet when she began training for a half marathon on a whim, she found herself an instant convert. Soon she realized that running, “a pace suited to the precarious labor of memory,” was helping her to grieve the loss of her parents in ways that she had been, for ten messy years, running away from.

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  • Crown
  • Hardcover
  • May 2017
  • 256 Pages
  • 9781524759445

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$25.00

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About Catriona Menzies-Pike

Catriona Menzies-Pike is the editor of the Sydney Review of Books. She has worked in digital media for a decade and her journalism and essays on feminism, literary culture, and politics have been widely published. She holds a PhD in English literature and has taught film, literature, journalism and cultural studies units to undergraduates since 2001. In 2008 she ran her first half-marathon, and five marathons and dozens of half marathons later, she’s still running.

Praise

“Elegant and erudite….The most resonant parts of [Menzies-Pike’s] narrative deal with her own personal loss, and how tightly it becomes interwoven with her experiences as a runner….Gorgeously written and extremely moving.”The Atlantic

“Menzies-Pike’s engaging book braids together feminist and literary theory, cultural criticism, history, and a moving personal narrative…Important and fascinating.”Publishers Weekly

“You don’t have to be a runner to appreciate The Long Run.…Engrossing.”Bustle