The Dive From Clausens Pier, Ann Packer
The Dive From Clausens Pier, Ann Packer
4 Rating(s)
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The Dive From Clausen's Pier

Author: Ann Packer

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Unabridged: 16 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/21/2015


Synopsis

"The Dive from Clausen's Pier is one of those small miracles that reinforce our faith in fiction. It does what the best novels so often do, making the largest things visible by its perfect rendering of life on the smaller scale. It is witty, tragic and touching, and beguiling from the first page." --Scott Turow

A riveting novel about loyalty and self-knowledge, and the conflict between who we want to be to others and who we must be for ourselves.

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?

The Dive from Clausen’s Pier reminds us how precarious our lives are and how quickly they can be divided into before and after, whether by random accident or by the force of our own desires. It begins with a disaster that could happen, out of the blue, in anybody’s life, and it forces us to ask how we would bear up in the face of tragedy and what we know, or think we know, about our deepest allegiances. Elegantly written and ferociously paced, emotionally nuanced and morally complex, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier marks the emergence of a prodigiously gifted new novelist.

About The Author

Ann Packer is the author of two bestselling novels, Songs Without Words (2007) and The Dive from Clausen's Pier (2002), and two collections of short fiction, Swim Back to Me (2011) and Mendocino and Other Stories (1994). She lives in northern California.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Catherine on July 13, 2007

UG! I can't put into words my utter disappointment with the main character Carrie. I actually wanted her to come to life so I could bitch slap her. I don't want to divulge too much for I might ruin the ending for those who want to read it (please don't). The story had merit, the writing was good, bu......more

Goodreads review by Robert on December 14, 2018

This is one of those books that really shouldn't be that involving but really is--at least it was for me. Having read her latest effort (The Children's Crusade), I have come to realize that Ann Packer is someone who can create characters that become very, very present and real. I found myself totall......more

Goodreads review by Amanda on July 25, 2007

Way back in the day, I used to read these terrible teen dramas by Lurlene McDaniel. Someone in the book either had cancer, was dying, or was just killed and I sobbed from the beginning of the book to the end. So I stopped reading those books. The Dive From Clausen's Pier was a grown-up Lurlene McDani......more

Goodreads review by Perrine on November 28, 2011

I don't think that I would have stumbled upon this book had my friend not recommended it to me. It is a rich and utterly human story of loss, coming of age and self-discovery. Carrie, the protagonist, is a 23-year old girl who hasn't yet been allowed to spread her wings. When she is considering maki......more

Goodreads review by Kate on January 01, 2008

Carrie Bell feels the pull of a new life awaiting her outside her Wisconsin hometown. Her relationship with her fiance Mike is boring her, and she wants to see the world and learn who she is. She goes out with Mike on Memorial Day, and he dives headfirst into a shallow lake and is immediately paraly......more


Quotes

"The novels it calls most to mind. . . . are Allegra Goodman's 'Kaaterskill Falls' and Sue Miller's 'The Good Mother'. . . .its most admirable trait -- and surely the one that will define Packer's future work -- is its moral authenticity." --Gail Caldwell, Boston Globe

"The Dive from Clausen's Pier is one of those small miracles that reinforce our faith in fiction. It does what the best novels so often do, making the largest things visible by its perfect rendering of life on the smaller scale. It is witty, tragic and touching, and beguiling from the first page." --Scott Turow

"A reflective and probing first novel...there's not a false note in the story's tentative resolution, which thwarts our initial expectations in order to satisfy more complex demands...Very fine fiction indeed." --Kirkus Reviews

"This is the sort of book one reads dying to know what happens to the characters, but loves for its wisdom: it sees the world with more clarity than you do." --Publishers Weekly

"Ann Packer’s first novel has all the weight of reality, tooled with a jeweler’s precision. The Dive from Clausen's Pier is a poignant and painstakingly rendered account of a woman in flight from catastrophe, in search of herself."--Madison Smartt Bell


Awards

  • Alex Award - YALSA
  • New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age