The Dive from Clausen's Pier

"The accident happened to Mike not to me," girlfriend Carrie writes. But she is wrong. It happened to Mike and everyone around him. This is a sensitive and intimate look at the fallout of a life-altering accident -- especially but not exclusively -- on the girlfriend of the victim. Mike breaks his neck in, yes, a dive from Clausen's Pier. Despite diminishing affections, Carrie doesn't feel that she can break up with Mike and struggles in her new role as nurse/supporter. She literally escapes to NYC where she encounters a new world of opportunities (great look into the fashion design industry), new friends, and a new lover. The pull of hearth and home are too strong, however, and Carrie ultimately returns to Madison, WI, where she slowly show more forges a new life.

Beautifully written, intimate, and articulate... this would be great bibliotherapy for anyone dealing with a loved one who has a life-altering illness/injury. It's also a great tale for the young adult trying to find their way in the world -- the perils and rewards of journeying out versus staying home. show less

This book is beautifully written, but I found it ultimately disappointing. It started off very well, with the descriptions of Carrie's feeling of being trapped in the life that was expected of her, and her budding determination to break her engagement and find her own life. Once her fiance takes that fateful dive on Memorial Day, it all starts to slip away. I think that the description of Mike's injury, treatment, and Carrie's guilt and resistance to others expectations is done well. However, when Carrie runs off to New York, she appears to want to become a completely different person, not just to explore her dreams. The descriptions of her love affair with fabric and fashion design are lovely. The message here seems to be that finding show more one's own life and purpose should be the goal. Great. Then, the message seems to be that such dreams are futile and that ultimately guilt and obligation will most likely win the day. A very disappointing end. Such a shame. show less

In an interview with Ann Packer that I heard on NPR, she said that she generally started her stories with an image and built the plot around that image. I find myself imagining which image was the catalyst for her novels while I'm reading. I also find myself encouraged by her description of her process, as it seems like it legitimizes my own writing process. Mine is much more like Packer's than it is like the "write up an outline and do your research before you start writing" process. I always feel inferior to writers who outline their plots before they start, which tinges my pleasure in reading their work.

The plot of this book appealed to me on a couple of levels (beyond feeling a kinship to the author based on her writing process). show more First, I just like reading about the Midwest. And second, whenever things get difficult in my life, I retreat into fantasies of escape, of just hopping in my car and leaving everything behind. I never take these fantasies beyond that "jumping in the car" point, but that's just what Packer has done in this book. What happens when you get where you're going? What happens if you want to go home again?

This is also a story of loss, and of how people (two people in particular) choose to deal with loss. Packer explores the relationship between our identities and our geographical location and the question of whether you can ever truly leave home. As someone who's never had one geographical location to call "home" (the question I generally ask is, "Would I know "home" if I saw it?"), I'm intrigued by the idea of someone living the same place all of her life, especially when that character pulls up stakes and leaves that lifelong home. I'm quite familiar with the pulling up stakes, but not so much the staying in one place.

Packer seems very adept at painting vivid settings. With Songs Without Words, I wondered if I thought this just because I was familiar with the location of her story. But having never been to Madison, Wisconsin, and having spent less than 24 hours in New York City, I think I can safely say that the vivid image, both visual and physical, of these locations is a result of Packer's skill as a writer. I might be totally off in what I'm imagining the look of these cities to be and the feel of the air in different seasons, but the picture Packer painted drew me in and made me lose my sense of where I was (sitting on my sofa in Salt Lake City reading her book and hoping the baby would stay asleep long enough that I could finish just one more chapter). The accuracy of my image seems pretty irrelevant in this case. show less

I found this book hard to put down. The story is sad, the character development excellent, the whole feel of it kind of melancholy. The author is an excellent writer. Her descriptions of the main character losing herself in her sewing were so vivid: I could almost feel the silks and other fabrics she described, the weight of the materials, the joy in transforming a bolt of cloth into a custom made garment. I was almost compelled to dust off my sewing machine, which has been in storage for 20 years!

Worth it. First off, this book made me want to sew so badly, I could smell fabric on the ends of my fingertips. I lvoed Packer's use of the art of sewing and construction to emulate the protagonists struggle to construct a solid, perfect reality, even as her world unraveled.

The Dive From Clausen's Pier starts with a tragic accident, and moves along with a rehabilitation. I almost didn't pick it up for this reason, as I feared it would be one of those books/movies (like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) where you live every painful, struggling thought alongside the protagonist. But no, here, it's not the guy who dove who winds up struggling, but his fiancee. And you do feel sorry for her...or you don't AT ALL. (I'm curious as to how show more other readers reacted to her.)

The book made me guiltily relive just how selfish I was when I was 23-years-old, and made me (for once), grateful not to be in my twenties again. The struggle of that age is artfully expressed by Packer's characters, who run the reader through the emotions of guilt, (repeated) panic, rage for no reason, rage for good reason, grudges, longing, and everything else that is as far from settled and secure as you can get.

Take a bow, Mrs. Packer. I'd love to read more of your fiction in the future. Oh, and I added a bonus star for the good sex :) show less

The Dive From Clausen's Pier is about Carrie Bell, a young woman who doesn't really give a lot of thought to other people's feelings. After her fiance is paralyzed from a diving accident (hence the title of the book) Carrie must decide if she can spend the rest of her life with a quadriplegic she doesn't really love anymore. After the decision has been made the rest of the book is more of the same, Carrie steamrolling over people's emotions while she forges ahead in search of what makes her happy. The Dive From Clausen's Pier is extremely well written. Character development is flawless. Carrie is supposed to make you angry. Her family and friends are appropriately hurt and slow to forgive. You may not agree with the character (I show more certainly didn't when it came to her second big decision), but you will agree with the words on the pages on which she comes to life. show less

this is a book that is filled with sadness. i think it's intended to also have hope and possibility, but having just finished it, all i want to do is curl up in a ball and sob uncontrollably.

even so (in part because of?), i really, really liked this book. the first and last sections in particular. the second section was (to me,) profoundly unsatisfying, but not in the writing at all. just in my expectations of the character and how she was falling short. the writing throughout kept drawing me in. it's just quite depressing. is it the story or the writing or me? i can't say for sure.

"I tried to focus on the fabrics. For a moment sewing seemed like the saddest of enterprises, a world of hope embodied in the clean rolls of fabric, when all show more you'd really get would be a new slipcover, a new throw pillow for your same old bed."

"There were things I'd seen in him that perhaps no one else had ever seen or noticed - wouldn't those things disappear along with my apprehension of them? Because we were caretakers of each other's habits and expressions, weren't we, witnesses who didn't just see but who gave existence? Our coming apart would erase all those tiny moments and gestures and looks from everywhere but our separate memories, until even there our history would begin to fade." show less