Rating: 
Summary: Rich, Well Written, Thought Provoking
Review: I loved this book. Yes, the protagonist is a bit ditzy, but who wouldn't be when connected to a paralyzed fiance you don't love. The author did a great job of exploring the strength of connection between the twentysomething generation, and also looked at ambition, love, and yearing in unique ways. The conclusion was a bit unsatisfying, since everything is left up in the air. Like life.
Rating: 
Summary: Heart wrenching. In a bad way.
Review: I decided to read this book because of the good reviews. I plunged through it, reading and reading, waiting and waiting for Carrie to do the right thing. It left me feeling very sad and empty. The writing was good, but the characters were blah.
Rating: 
Summary: Reality Check
Review: This book started with promise. Madison is drawn as the sort of college town that breeds townies, and Packer's descriptions make it easy to see why this is both appealing and suffocating. At first, it is also easy to see why Carrie is dissatisfied with life, and Mike. Carrie's dilemma of what to do when their long-term relationship loses steam, but when Mike's devastating accident forces Carrie to play a role of dutiful girlfriend that no longer fits makes her character sympathetic and believable. However, it quickly becomes obvious that Carrie is not worthy of sympathy--she is just wishy-washy, and incredibly self-absorbed. Her abrupt departure to New York can be justified as a short term need to escape, but her lack of initiative once in NY and utter lack of concern for those who, for whatever reason, care about her back in Madison renders her downright unlikable. In addition, Kilroy may hold a physical grasp on her, but his behavior should inspire Carrie, who supposedly moved to NY to make a break for independence, to run even further, rather than become a slave to her attraction to him. Beyond this, I've rarely read such an unrealistic depiction of New York. Although I enjoyed the descriptions of getting to know the city through walking (and walking...and walking...), as a New Yorker, I was almost offended at the stereotypes Packer enthusiastically embraces: every young person is an Ivy League bohemian, every older person is actually extremely wealthy (whether they admit it or not). Come on! Packer might have done well to actually spend some time here before trying to draw a picture of the place. This was surprising considering the wonderful detail with which Madison is described in the early part of the book. The last segment, where Carrie returns to Madison, provide some narrative closure, and the ending is almost elegant. But Carrie remains an annoying, condescending and selfish cypher. The manner in which Packer now describes Madison paints it as the seventh ring of Hell--why would Carrie, with her new sensibilities, ever choose to stay there, except to embrace the obligations from which she fled? But we've gotten no sense of any maturation on her part--it seems that she will just as likely float back to NY, maybe if she were to ever find out what the deal is with Kilroy and his parents...
Rating: 
Summary: Don't bother!
Review: I really wanted to like this book, but the [weak] characters and plot did nothing but annoy. It has it's moments, but they are so few and far between that they paled in comparison to the rest of the tedium.
Rating:
Summary: Better than I expected...
Review: The premise of this book didn't seem interesting to me at all; I expected it to be completely shallow and unrealistic. I would not have read it if it hadn't been picked for my book club. However, having said that, it turned out to be better than I expected. The first 30 pages or so were hard for me to get through, but after that it went quickly and I finished it that same day. None of the characters were people that I 'liked' necessarily; I wouldn't choose to be friends with any of them. Yet at the same time they did seem fairly realistic, so I don't count that as a negative point since I could still relate to them in a way. I don't think that Carrie ever really grew up, she never seemed to go through a heartwrenching time of decision. The reader is never let in on whether or not she even had thoughts going through her head, and if she did....what on earth were they? She really just kind of fell into her "decisions". I think that this may be the main reason that many readers disliked the ending. If Carrie really did make that journey in her mind and heart that the plot indicates, then she did it without the reader, because we are never clued into what she's feeling or thinking. This book was a fine read, though it could have been exceptional if Carrie's decision points were developed more thoroughly. I found myself longing to be carried along in her heartbreak and healing, but it turned out that she had no heartbreak, healing, or feelings. She ended up just gliding along; her choices were all made based upon other people after all, and she never even realized it.
Rating:
Summary: Sadly, very mediocre
Review: I had high hopes for this book, after reading initial reviews from Publishers Weekly and others. When I finally sat down to read it last weekend, I was sorely disapoointed. The book jackets claims "ferociously paced" and I found it dragging immensely. Carrie is a truly vile character. For some odd reason, however, her friends in Madison continue to cater to her when there is truly no need. Halfway through the book , the ending is blatent. Many parts of the story that were interesting were left totally unexplored and hanging. I found this trite and Carrie's entire existence in NY seemed fruitless. Although some parts were fine and it was well-written, it was a very typical Midwestern story, with no real distinction between the thousands of other coming-of-age, change-of-heart midwestern sagas out there. Not much to fuss about.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: I cannot say this is the best book I have read all summer, but the dilemma of Carrie Bell is much more real and perplexing than the one faced by the main character in "The Emperor of Ocean Park". How does one deal when the man you are falling out of love with suddenly suffers a life threatening accident that leaves him quadriplegic? Carrie's answer is to run. I think many have criticized the narration of the novel as being so slow and emotionless, but I think Carrie is just in shock for most of the novel. The accident and the fallout from it has just left her dazed, and nobody seems to understand her or wants to. I do agree with another reviewer that everybody seems to handle her disappearance a little too matter of factly. Give me a break, they would have been worried out of their minds. Carrie is an imperfect person, and while I don't always applaud the judgement calls she has made, i cannot say it made for a bad book. The biggest flaw in the novel are the New York sequences. Whereas Madison, Wisconsin seems populated with real people, and real lingo (Packer has a real ear for the way young people trapped between college and real life speak), New York just seems to come across as a bleak, depressing place where even people's language is pretentious and meaningless. The shift to New York weighs the book down, and I found myself starting to become a bit impatient with the writing style. Carrie ends up in a relationship with an older man who, despite his protestations at being real, comes across as pretentious and artifical as everybody else in the city. I live in New York but did not recognize or like the city Packer was writing about. The novel picks up again in its last third as Carrie is forced to look at herself and the people in her life and make a decision, but by then, I had started to grow tired of a lot of the characters and situations. I was glad that the book came back to life, but it was too late. The book starts out strong and ends strongly, but there is too much holding it back in the middle section that keeps it from being a great novel.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and disappointing at the same time
Review: I could not put this book down. I think it was mainly because I identified with so many different characteristics described in this book, not so much as a whole character but a little bit of Kilroy and a little bit of Carrie, Jamie and so on.. Also having grown up in the big city, I liked the way author described New York. I knew the area and it was fun to read. There were a lot of logic issues in the book. But I think we have to realize that this is a work of fiction and it is author's work. Overall I think the book was entertaining and a good read.
Rating:
Summary: Good Read, Just Curb The Hype
Review: This novel begins with a bang, middles with a whimper and ends strongly. The mid-section needs some work, but overall, a solid story. Some readers have criticized the main character for her selfishness, but I must admit that I identified with her. Put the hype aside and read it on its own terms. Or, pick up another first novel and give it the same level of attention this one has received.
Rating: 
Summary: The Dive from Clausen's Pier
Review: From short-story author Packer (Mendocino, 1994), a reflective and probing first novel about a young woman reassessing her life after her fiance is crippled. Twenty-three-year-old Carrie is already quietly bored with Mike when he dives off the pier at Clausen's Reservoir and breaks his neck. Suddenly there are others to contend with-her mother (her father vanished when Carrie was three), her best friend Jamie, Mike's parents, even Mike's best friend Rooster. Everyone thinks they know exactly who Carrie is and what she will do. Already, her future was no longer cast in a perfectly comfortable mold, and she's panicked now as the accident threatens to set it in stone. After going through the motions for a few weeks, refusing to make emotional contact with anyone even as she dutifully visits Mike in the hospital, Carrie jumps into her car and heads to New York City. There, she moves in with a gay friend from high school and quickly embarks on a love affair with Kilroy, an older man who's everything Mike is not: moody, secretive, distrustful of easy emotions. Carrie sets out to make a new identity for herself: she takes classes in clothing design, befriends a lesbian poet, slowly learns more about Kilroy's conflicted past. Meanwhile, phone calls home don't convince anyone she's coming back: Mike is resigned, Jamie bitterly angry. Few readers, either, will expect her to return again, since Packer has painted such a compelling portrait of her alienation at home and of New York's liberating pleasures as the city where people reinvent themselves. But this turns out to be a deeper novel than that, as Packer sends Carrie home to make her peace with Mike and Jamie. And there's not a false note in the story's tentative resolution, which thwarts our initial expectations in order to satisfy more complex demands. Lucid prose limns complicated people whose dilemmas illuminate crucial moral choices, large and small. Very fine fiction indeed. First printing of 75,000; author tour
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