The Dive From Clausen's Pier

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Summary: Life in words
Review: I'm the author of AKA DOCTOR. Ann has brought her characters to life, with a stroke of her pen. I could feel the characters come to life, and surround me in every page. I look forward to her next books.

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Summary: You've got to live your own life....
Review: I loved this book until Carrie moves back to Madison. She was doing so well in NYC, certainly better than she was in Madison (headed nowhere). She had friends, a lover and was headed for the career she always wanted. Once she goes back I could hardly stand to read it any more. She has essentially given up her own life to fill the needs of people who can't take care of herself (even Mike sees this). Read and enjoy the first 2/3rds and then move on.

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Summary: Thought Provoking and Emotional
Review: Carrie Bell has lived in Madison Wisconsin her whole life. She's had the same boyfriend since High School, and now at twenty three years of age, is wearing an engagement ring, and heading towards the alter. But Carrie wonders if life has more to offer, and tragically that wish is granted when her fiancee Mike is horribly injured in a diving accident.Starting a painful moral dilemma, she packs a bag and heads to New York City escaping a life she feels she had been fated to lead.
Packer paints a vivid before and after picture of Carrie's quiet, sedate life in rural suburbia, to the teeming urban jungle of Manhattan.
Her first person narrative sucks you in, packing an emotional wallop as Carrie tries to marry her two worlds and find forgiveness from both the people she left, and herself.Filled with original and honest characters, I thought this was a great first novel. One that I was sad to put down.

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Summary: Emotional Powerhouse
Review: This is the first book I have read by Ann Packer and it won't be my last! Her story about a 23 year old Wisconsin girl who feels stifled by her life with her routine boyfriend kept my attention from page 1. After a tragic accident leaves her fiance paralyzed she runs to New York to try to discover who she really is. The author explores her relationships with her fiance, new boyfriend, mom,and best friend with great depth and emotion. This book made me laugh and cry. It made me think deeply about how life can change in an instant and how there will always be opportunities that we can take or let pass by. I loved this book and was only disappointed when it ended because I wanted to know more and more about what lies in the future for these very interesting characters!

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Summary: Ultimately, who cares?
Review: Although this book was quick and somewhat engaging, when I completed it I was left wondering what I had just read. The character development is so anemic that you don't care about Carrie, Mike, Kilroy, Rooster, or any of the other main players. The best one in the whole thing was the mom, who at least spoke some sense once in awhile, but who rarely made an appearance and was never fleshed out. I was waiting for some major symbolic meaning to emerge in the use of the sewn garments (nightgown/robe and green velvet dress) but it never surfaced. We never find out what makes Kilroy tick, and the cliched description of New York was too much! Overall, not worth the time spent reading it.

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Summary: Well, it wasn't terrible...
Review: The Dive From Clausen's Pier was initially engaging. Being 23 isn't always the great ride that everyone thinks it is-some of us are stuck in between adult life and childhood, trying to reconcile responsibilities with real life. To that end, Packer has created a crippling (pardon the pun) dilemma: stay with someone that you no longer love out of obligation or follow your heart across the country. But the problem in this book lies less in the premise than in the execution of the main character, Carrie. She's a completely indifferent and I had trouble summoning up any type of sympathy for her and I had even more trouble figuring out why anyone cared about her. There was very little character development on her part, and for the most part you realize that much of the novel just didn't ring true at all and you're left thinking "what did I just read"?

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Summary: Witty
Review: I'm reading this now and can hardly pull myself away from it. Incidentally, I wonder if Ann Packer designed the dust jacket, if that's her personal joke. Well, back to the book.

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Summary: a lucky find
Review: I was browsing in the worlds best used bookstore, ... when I happened across a advanced readers copy of this book. It said on the back cover it was about a girl in Madison, WI-Kismet, co-winky-dink? Who knows. Best [money] i have spent in awhile. Ann Packer's novel made me cry and laugh, made me start sewing again (I kid you not). This lady MUST have lived in Madison, she knew everything about my favorite city on the lakes, down to the parks! A must read!

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Summary: Boring, tedious..........
Review: This book is very benign considering the subject matter. Carrie as the lead character is one dimensional.
It's very hard to like the character of Kilroy and he's oh so boring! There's no "love" here, just sex. Carrie doesn't even know who he is half the time.
I wanted to stay in Madison during most of the New York chapters, with everybody else BUT Carrie.
A big disappointment!

Rating:
Summary: Eloquent, touching and incisive
Review: "The Dive from Claussen's Pier" is my favorite type of novel...an intriguing, relatively fast read that is also well written and full of depth. It is definitely one of the best books I've read in a while. Very well drawn, natural characters, a compelling plot and excellently detailed settings. This is a novel that asks questions about morality, loyalty and self. It very effectively chronicles the nature of first love and growing up in general...a "coming of age" story with a major twist. The first book I've had a real emotional response to in a long time. Although it deals with tragedy, it also very deftly describes some of the "growing pains" many of us go through in our early to mid twenties (changing friendships, figuring out who you are and what you want out of life in general, etc.).