Girl Runner
A Novel
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4.1 • 13 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Longlist, Canada Reads 2025
Shortlist, Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize 2014
Girl Runner is the story of Aganetha Smart, a former Olympic athlete who was famous in the 1920s, but now, at age 104, lives in a nursing home, alone and forgotten by history. For Aganetha, a competitive and ambitious woman, her life remains present and unfinished in her mind.
When her quiet life is disturbed by the unexpected arrival of two young strangers, Aganetha begins to reflect on her childhood in rural Ontario and her struggles to make an independent life for herself in the city.
Without revealing who they are, or what they may want from her, the visitors take Aganetha on an outing from the nursing home. As ready as ever for adventure, Aganetha’s memories are stirred when the pair return her to the family farm where she was raised. The devastation of WWI and the Spanish flu epidemic, the optimism of the 1920s and the sacrifices of the 1930s play out in Aganetha’s mind, as she wrestles with the confusion and displacement of the present.
Part historical page-turner, part contemporary mystery, Girl Runner is an engaging and endearing story about family, ambition, athletics and the dedicated pursuit of one’s passions. It is also, ultimately, about a woman who follows the singular, heart-breaking and inspiring course of her life until the very end.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1928, Canada's "matchless six" won gold at the first Olympics in which women competed in track, serving as the inspiration for this novel about a fictional female runner who races in those historic games. Aganetha Smart, youngest daughter of an Ontario farmer and his second wife, shows natural speed and agility as a child running between her parents' house and that of her married half-sister. At 16, Aggie leaves the farm for Toronto, where her athletic ability lands her a job at a confectionery whose owner subsidizes women racers. With a coach and training companion, Aggie learns the meaning of competition, then goes on to experience victory, celebrity, love, betrayal, and sacrifice. Her story is revealed through layers of time: 104-year-old Aganetha introduces herself in the prologue, the first chapter begins with adolescent Aggie tending family graves, and the next scene shows two visitors to the 104-year-old's nursing home a girl training for the Olympics and her brother, who have a surprising connection to Aggie. Infused with striking imagery and pearls of wisdom, Snyder's novel attempts to capture how it feels to be a female athlete, an independent woman, and above all a runner. Like the pioneers of 1928, the characters in this novel win gold or get disqualified in the process, go on to modest modeling and acting careers, and disappear from the spotlight, while Snyder focuses on the feelings behind their public triumphs, the emotions beneath their personal turmoil.
