Rating: 
Summary: Rings true to me
Review: I listened to this book on tape as I drove home from St. Louis,
a city I had fled much as Carrie Bell had some 30 years ago, to my now home in Eureka Springs, Ark. In my case, I fled with a
Mike, not away from one. Neverthless the sense of putting people on an iceberg and then cutting it loose was an apt description for how I felt. The author captured it all for me so well, the being torn, the indecision, the excitement of finding oneself in a new location with all new people. I loved the reader's smokey voice and found it devoid of sappiness or self-pity. I identified most with Carrie but found all the characters believable and sympathetic. I am amused that so many of the people who have reviewed this book found it necessary to judge Carrie for her actions and found her totally self-absorbed.
I also identified with the experience of having paid for something and then abandoned it. This, too, is an agonizing experience but the author (and I appreciate this very much) almost understates it.
Rating:
Summary: A Dive Into the Self
Review: Why did this book "work" for me? It opens with a life-changing event, has characters who aren't "perfect," and shows Packer's skill in weaving plot with characterization. Whether or not the reader likes Carrie Bell is irrelevant; the point is that she is 23, falling out of love with the boy who has been her sweetheart from the time she was 14, and engaged to marry him, when he suffers an accident that leaves him paralyzed. Those who condemn Carrie for her selfishness and cruelty in leaving Mike are looking for the story of a martyr. But it's not just Mike she's leaving; her hometown and the life it promised her with Mike even before the accident is already beginning to suffocate her when Carrie flees to its apparent antithesis, New York City. Carrie would not have been any good to Mike if she had stayed out of a sense of duty; he would have felt he was being pitied, while she would've been filled with resentment as she performed the daily routine actions that he was no longer capable of doing for himself. What a sad life that would've been. Instead Carrie removes herself from the situation and tries to remake herself, or at least tries to answer the question of who she is and what she wants to do with herself. Here Packer still resists creating a fairy-tale alternative for Carrie, for Kilroy, the 40 year old man she becomes involved with, is himself flawed, and therefore incapable of offering her a picture-perfect life. He's stimulating, attentive, intelligent, but also sardonic, inscrutable, and emotionally impenetrable. While Carrie thought she could be happy with him, I couldn't help but think that this man was "broken" emotionally, whereas Mike, back home, was broken physically. It's promising that Carrie starts to pursue her interest in fashion design, yet not disappointing when she leaves her studies unfinished because she is simply choosing to "finish" or pick up what she left behind at home. Rather than seeing it as another business left unfinished, I preferred to think of it as Carrie recognizing the importance of extending herself for someone else rather than selfishly putting herself first. Is she "settling" at the end? I don't think she sees it that way at all. I think both Mike and she can appreciate the relationship that will exist between the two of them because of, and not in spite of, what each has learned about themselves and about the other over the course of the year. She isn't perfect; in fact, had the crisis in her friend Jamie's family not happened, it's very possible that Carrie would have continued her self-centered (yet in its own way, healing) odyssey into the world of fashion. The fact that she makes the trip back to Madison for Jamie's sake, when she wouldn't make it for Mike's, makes sense, too. She believed she was going back just for the crisis, not that she was going because she was consciously accepting what life with Mike would have held for her. In going back to Madison she's not repeating herself by this time abandoning Kilroy because she never really "had" him. He's emotionally crippled and never pretends to be other than he is. Likewise, he tells her he wouldn't want her to be anyone other than who she is, even if it means losing her.
The fact that there are no perfect characters, no martyrs or knights in shining armor, is what makes this book's characterization so human and "right on." It made me think about the fragility of life circumstances as well as raising the question of the difference between actions performed out of love and those done merely out of a sense of duty. Carrie helped me see that unless one is at peace with one's situation, simply "being there," although giving the appearance of courage, is actually cowardice. Thank you, Ann Packer, for a moving story.
Rating:
Summary: A Realistic Moral Dilemma
Review: I was disappointed that so many people disliked this book because they disliked the characters. We know that in life people do not behave as we would wish, and we ourselves often do not live up to our image of ourselves. I was fascinated to read about someone reacting to a terrible event with indecision. Does a tragedy at the start of adult life require the victim's partner to also give up opportunity and adventure? This is pretty good stuff for a novel. I thought Packer did a good job with this book and I am still musing about the situation. Read it as a story, as a question, not as a map of how to live. I have friends like Jamie who drive me crazy but love me truely, I know pretentious but beautiful New Yorkers, I was intriqued by this book.
Rating:
Summary: Lovely prose tells about growing up
Review: The Dive from Clausen's Pier has as its subject the old "who am I really?" that is at the heart of so many novels, and so many stages of life.It shouldn't be a tiresome question, not in novels and not in life. But the question is not interesting if the answers or process getting to the answers are inauthentic--gimmicky--false--or surface; again, in books OR life. The Dive from Clausen's Pier was a page-turner because it has the inexorable quality of
real life. It is also a great book for staying on that page for a while, to reflect what has happened. I was totally, totally impressed--and satisfied. Satisfied with a great read and many deep dense thoughts afterward. It was a real gift. So many books in modern times do not have that density. Reading it, I never felt hurried-- or falsely moved by a SIGNAL for emotion rather than the emotion itself. I came to care for everyone: I cared about Carrie, of course, I cared about Mike; I even understood that the witty, sexy, attractive Kilroy, Carrie's boyfriend in New York, had to do what he did because that what was so clearer what he'd become. The novel contained as much information about psychology, personality and human motivation as 60 psychology books, well integrated into an absorbing novel. My kind of book exactly.~
Rating:
Summary: honest and well written
Review: Carrie Bell is a small city girl living the life she is expected to live when her fiance's tragic accident results in his becoming a quadriplegic and forces Carrie to reexamine her life. The beauty of this story is not just the characters or the plot but in visualizing the world around them. I really enjoyed Ann Packer's writng and after a while I even liked the people she created. They are not heroes and they are not important people, but they somehow seem more relevant with their flaws and indecision. I highly reccommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Until the End
Review: I really liked this book at first. It was a little slow to get into it, but once Carrie ran away to New York, it picked up. However, in the end, it turned out to be a book about a girl who settles because she doesn't have the courage to follow her dreams. And apparently she's very good at "out of sight, out of mind." Not exactly a protagonist you can root for. One good thing came out of it, though. I got the sewing bug.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth a Dive
Review: What made Packer's book interesting is all that she left out; a description of Carrie (our narrator), her reasons for what she did, etc. Packer creatively weaves an interesting story, and leaves much un-said for the reader to get involved by drawing their own conclusions. Yet, this book is not without it's drawbacks: the characters are more caricatures of twenty-somethings, than actual characters, and for a while Packer leaves the storyline floating with no place to go (an un-inspired little mystery about the character Kilroy slows down the pace, rather than moving the story along). Still, the book has left me wanting more from Packer in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Yuppie fiction for yuppie readers.
Review: Ever notice how almost every novel you pick up these days involves a character who either works as a model, a stockbroker, or an advertising executive in Manhattan? When did "reality" of the world get so glossed up and sanitized? We expect it from Hollywood, but now it's happening in fiction as well. "DCP" involves a woman named Carrie. Carrie is stuck in the midwest and she decides to ditch her fiance after he has a horrible accident. She goes to NY to follow her dream -- of what else? -- being a fashion designer. For the rest of the book Carrie whines, justifies, and then whines some more about what she's done, while losing herself in an absurdly unbelievable character named -- get this -- Kilroy. How many guys named Kilroy have you ever met? The New York in this book is written by a yuppie and made for yuppies. I wonder if Packer has even been to the city. If she has, certainly she must know how damn hard it is to find free housing -- unless you're homeless, and that's certainly not the side of New York Packer wants to portray. This is Literature, remember? Plus, there's not a single description that actually captures that combination of grit and splendor that characterizes New York. It's all written as though it came out of a trendy tourist brochure. And Carrie is by far the most annoying character in contemporary fiction. Some people think Packer is being honest in her depiction of a selfish sniveling chick who drops her beau because he doesn't wear clothes bought from Banana Republic or read Victorian novels -- and, oh yean: because he's in a deep coma because he jumped off a stupid dock. I think Carrie is merely annoying, as is the story, as is the entire conceit behind this silly book.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: I loved this book, couldn't put it down!
Rating:
Summary: HereInMilwaukee
Review: I bought this book despite the rather poor customer reviews I read at Amazon.com and am glad that I did. I thought the book was great. The writing was so clear that I felt as though I was going through the emotions with Carrie and I could sympathize with her. I read another reader's review critizing the fact that the author didn't describe Carrie physically, but I found that aspect of the book intriguing. I think the things that the author left OUT of the book were as important as what she put in. For example, we never really know Mike's thoughts and that gave me a lot to think about. Again, I thought the book was excellent.
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