The Dive From Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer

Synopsis

Carrie Bell has lived in Wisconsin all her life. She’s had the same best friend, the same good relationship with her mother, the same boyfriend, Mike, now her fiancé, for as long as anyone can remember. It’s with real surprise she finds that, at age twenty-three, her life has begun to feel suffocating. She longs for a change, an upheaval, for a chance to begin again.

That chance is granted to her, terribly, when Mike is injured in an accident. Now Carrie has to question everything she thought she knew about herself and the meaning of home. She must ask: How much do we owe the people we love? Is it a sign of strength or of weakness to walk away from someone in need?

Why did you decide to read this book?

I actually have no idea how this book came to be sitting on my bookshelf. Someone else has already read it so maybe I mooched it. I picked it up when I was looking for books to read for the New Authors 2010 challenge.

What did you think about this book?

This is my first time reading an Ann Packer novel. And The Dive from Clausen’s Pier is Ann Packer’s first novel. I was hooked from the first paragraph, which is just the way I like a book to be, it sucks you in and you just know it’s going to be an easy and enjoyable read.

The question posed by Ann in this novel is a terrible one that no one ever wants to have to answer. What do you do if you start to grow away from your partner, and then they are injured in a terrible accident? Do you stay out of pity, or do you walk away and try and shape a new life buried under the weight of guilt?

Ann deals with this question and the answer in this beautifully written book and I found myself unable to put it down. I wanted to know what would become of Carrie, and of Mike. How her friends and family would react to the choices that she makes. And how the relationship with an enigmatic man helps Carrie answer the questions whirling round her own head and help her to decide on the path she wants to take in life.

I’m putting this one onto the 5 star bookshelf and will look out for Ann’s other novels.

Share a quote from the book

“From the jukebox of McClanahan’s I heard the line of a guitar life itself from the surface of a song and then settle down again. I wondered if this was what the beginning of crazy felt like. And then Kilroy would say something bland and vaguely cynical, and it would reel me back into where I was steady again.”

About the Author

“Ann Packer was born in Stanford, California, in 1959, and grew up near Stanford University, where her parents were professors. She attended Yale University and then, after five years working at a publishing company in New York, she went on to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, selling her first short story to The New Yorker a few weeks before receiving her degree. A fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing followed, and she spent two years living in Madison, Wisconsin, which would later become the setting of her first novel, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier.

While living in Wisconsin she published short stories in literary magazines and had a story chosen for inclusion in the annual O. Henry Awards prize stories anthology. With support from the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, she completed her first book, Mendocino and Other Stories. The National Endowment for the Arts provided a fellowship, and she spent much of the next decade working on The Dive from Clausen’s Pier. A critical success that became a national bestseller and was translated into ten languages, Dive received a Great Lakes Book Award, an American Library Association Award, and the Kate Chopin Literary Award. Ann’s second novel, the bestselling Songs Without Words, was published in 2007, and she is currently at work on a fourth work of fiction.

Ann returned to her native Bay Area in 1995. She lives with her family in San Carlos.”

Click here to find out more about Ann Packer