Rating: 
Summary: I wanted to jump too.
Review: This book would be great if it were listed in the YA section... it's the kind of two dimensional soap opera that i read in high school...picked this book for book club because it takes place in our home state but gawd i wish someone with some talent like jane hamilton would have chosen to write this story. Wait for the movie then go with your best friend from high school.
Rating: 
Summary: You can go home again
Review: Ann Packer's book starts out promisingly enough but somehow gets bogged down in the middle. The plot poses an interesting juxtaposition between the protagonist's self actualiziation and the moral dilemma of abandoning a decent fiancee who has suffered a life altering tragedy. The writing is infused throughout with empathy for all of her characters. They are real and quite human. The writer's biggest problem is indulgence. Good editing would have made this a more successful first effort. Towards the end I found myself bored and skimming to get to the end. Still I stuck it out and having finished The Dive from Clausen's Pier I find it sticks with me. The ending was emotionally satisfying. Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that she would split again -- that she had not yet finished her journey. I also wanted more exploration of the character Kilroy. He was, for me, the most interesting but least realized character in the novel. Hope to see more from Packer.
Rating: 
Summary: Loved it
Review: Having a similar experience in my life, I could feel the hospital room, see the machines, and know the delicacy of life. Ann Packer brought all the imagery of the dialog to life. Kilroy was an odd sort and I was frustrated along with Carrie as to what his big secret was. It was this frustration that kept me up at night reading trying to get to the end. I thought the ending was suitable. No happy ending for Carrie just the continuation of the growing pains of becoming an adult (from the child who was married to Mike). A different ending would not have been too realistic. A good read for people who like intelligent writing and inspire to find your life's passion, Carrie's was sewing, she was lucky to find it at a young age.
Rating: 
Summary: Whimp
Review: I started getting into the book when she went to NY. All of the sewing!!! I was so happy when she started design school, I thought great ...she's finally going to do something.Kilroy was definitely the most interesting character in the book, I wanted to know more about him, his brother Mike, his family, his time in France. I couldn't believe the ending, what a disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Pleasant enough, but overall flat
Review: This book was a good enough story to get me involved and interested throughout. It wasn't a "can't put it down" read though. The writer used her words to paint a good picture in my mind. But I never stayed up half the night to read just a little more, never stopped what I was doing during the day to get a few more pages in. The characters did not come alive enough for me to pull me in. Some of the dialogue was sort of wooden. I really couldn't feel a sense of Carrie's struggle. I couldn't relate, the way she shunned her best friend, a friend she had since grade school, since way before she got together with Mike. I would have been crying on my best friend's shoulder, after all Jamie was Carrie's best friend, not Mikes, and she seemed a good person, a good confidant. I also never felt I knew how Carrie felt about Kilroy. Yea, great sex, but why was she drawn to him in the first place? She was just so aimless and unfeeling, and there must be a torrent of emotions after the tragedy she went thru. It would have been fun to go thru a rich emotional experience with her. Some have argued with me that the point is that she was emotionally dead. Well, to me that just doesn't make for stirring and engaging reading. But ultimately, the most difficult part of the book for me to relate to was that she found a parking space in New York City, for free even. yea, right!
Rating: 
Summary: Fun Read
Review: Lots of questions go unanswered - and that is a good thing. I enjoyed the characters and would read a Part II book. But it is not necessary. I agree with others, I don't like that she jumped right into Kilroys bed and spent more time figuring him out rather than herself. If she would have figured herself out while in NY then she should have stayed. Since she didn't it does not matter that she went home - cause she can always leave again. It is typical-true-to-life that as soon as you find something you enjoy and feel your life is getting on track (her design/sewing classes) life keeps you moving and then you are at another crossroad. This was a fun read and fun to discuss her decisions with others.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing, but a frustrating ending.
Review: As much as I got [drawn] into this book, I was disappointed that the ending is the one that I wanted at the beginning of the novel--but by the time I got to the end I wanted a totally different ending! As much as I enjoyed reading this book, I wanted to shake Carrie and scream, "Go back to New York!!!"...
Rating:
Summary: The Dive from Claussen's Pier
Review: I could not get through this book, for me it was torture to finally finish it. I would not recommend it, too boring and the story drags on and on. So glad to have finished it and cannot believe that Good Morning America choose this book for their bookclub. Needless to say I will not ever take another book recommendation from them and their bookclub.
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.
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