Running Loose by Chris CrutcherMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
CATEGORY: REQUIRED
Running Loose is about a teenage boy who has everything, a girlfriend and a spot on the football team that will hopefully get him a scholarship for college. And while everything is going great, one other football team is challenging their undefeated status. In order to win, their coach encourages them to injure the other team's star player. Louis tries to argue with his coach but is thrown onto the field anyway. His other teammates go ahead and injure the star player and Louis leaves the game. After accusing the coach of setting that up and then being told that he was lying, he decided to quit the football team. Shortly after, his girlfriend dies in a car accident. Eventually as a way to deal with his loss, he joins the track team.
As a sports novel it delicately deals with racism and loss. The protagonist uses his sports as a way to learn and to grow, and most importantly to heal. There's a really interesting image at one point in this novel; the protagonist and an older man are playing a game of checkers and discussing religion at the same time. Louis is upset with God and when Louis gets bored with the game, the old man explains this sport analogy to him saying that if life was easy, we'd get bored and we wouldn't want to do it. Life needs to be messy, and hard, and complicated because that makes it worth it.
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