Rating: 
Summary: Something different
Review: At first I didn't enjoy reading this, I even started thinking about not finishing it. I didn't agree with what the main character chose to do in her life. However, after reading more of the book, I came to enjoy it more and couldn't wait to finish reading it. I think overall is was a good book but not the greatest. It was interesting to read about the details in Madison versus New York. I can't say I would read it again but I am glad that I read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Drawn Emotions - Perfect Ending
Review: This book grabbed me from the first chapter. It had been sitting on my "to read" pile for awhile as I was afraid it was going to be a depressing read. It wasn't.
The story begins with a terrible accident and tells of an accelerated maturing of a young woman as a consequence. The emotions are so well drawn that you feel their veracity.
The setting, in Madison Wisconsin, made the book a personal look back.
The ending was perfect, not contrived as I often feel about the endings of books. The book's ending left the reader with the right closure to the story and characters.
Rating:
Summary: Fast compelling read
Review: This is one of the best books I've read in a long time, because it was fast, really fast, but it made me think, and I won't forget it right away. The main character Carrie Bell is at a place in her life where she wants to move on from her hometown and her highschool sweetheart Mike, who she's not really sure she wants to marry. But, Mike has a tragic accident that leaves him quadriplegic, and nothing will ever be the same for Mike or Carrie. The character of Carrie is a little weak. I never felt like I really knew her even though I was in her head, perhaps because she kept making choices that really surprised me; they didn't seem to fit who I thought her character was. But, also because I didn't know whether she really loved her fiance Mike, her best friend Jamie, her new boyfriend Kilroy, or even her mother, which is strange. However, the book really made me think about a lot of things. First, what it would be like for Mike to overnight go from being an athlete to a quadripede. I have a friend who has spent a lot of his life taking care of his quadriplegic son (a young man who was injured in a similar kind of accident) and the book really touched me because of that. I felt like I understood my friend a lot better after reading it. I think Carrie's relationships in Madison were pretty realistic. Breaking away from highschool friends and significant others is a hard thing to do, especially in a town like Madison where you don't have to. You grow apart, but you're still together. I could relate to that. I also liked that Carrie sewed. I don't sew, but I found Packer's descriptions of it riveting, and it actually made me want to start. And, finally, I loved the character of Kilroy. I almost feel like I knew Kilroy, because the character was so like someone I knew long ago. He's a complex, interesting character. So, while I thought the book was flawed, the good parts outweighed the bad. And, even though a lot of Carrie's decisions made me cringe, I am so glad I read this book. I thought it would be depressing when I read the back of it, but, by the end, it was uplifting. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Short on plot, long on food for thought
Review: This book was the November selection for my book club. While most of our panel enjoyed the story and its characters, what most intrigued us were the questions it raised. What is our responsiblity to our loved ones when they are infirmed or incapacitated? Does a mental incapacitation change the situation? What about a marriage versus a lovers' affair versus a friendship? Some of the lines in Ann Packer's first novel are so graceful, so lovely. For example, she writes of a relationship as a beautiful mansion with many rooms as yet undiscovered. Her characters are written without much depth, with one or two exceptions. The story is flat and drags in places, yet I continued to turn its pages. There is much to say about the characters and setting of this novel. But what seems more important about this book, rather than its literary merit, is its contribution to general ethics and thought. What would you do?
Rating:
Summary: Touching up to a point but then a let down
Review: I was really touched by this book through the first section. From the way it was written (very well), I thought Carrie was actually falling back in love with Mike when she was remembering all the good things. It made me realize that you need to do that in any relationship sometimes. I thought it would be a nice ending for her to realize that love at the end. But instead, she falls in love (supposedly love--really, more lust) with someone else and then goes back to Mike, but not, it seems out of love (the ring is now a "friendship ring?") All the touching things in the first section were left out of the last section, and their relationship was no longer special. I was disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Realistic
Review: An excellent read. The author had me wanting to know "what will happen" throughout the whole novel. I found the book not only to be entertaining but very realistic. This reader could relate to Carrie's thoughts.
Rating:
Summary: The Dive From Clausen's Pier
Review: Ann Packer's The Dive from Clausen's Pier takes the reader's heart and places it straight into the story. This book called me to take the character's life my own hands. The situations described in this novel explains a complicated issue of love and lose.
Carrie and Mike's high school sweetheart relationship is faltering because Carrie does not feel comfortable within the relationship anymore. During a Memorial Day trip, Mike dives off of Clausen's Pier, and he breaks his neck. This accident causes Mike to stay in a coma for a long period of time, and as he awakens it is learned that he is paralyzed. Carrie has to take herself away from the situation in Wisconsin so she headed to New York. Carrie struggles with her heart becasue she was finding herself falling in love with Kilroy. She starts a new life, studying for fashion design in New York, while Mike and friends are back in Wisconsin. After a terrible situation with Carrie's best friend's sister, Carrie decides to return home to Wisconsin. Her return brings about change in her relationship with Mike. She takes off her engagement ring and she places it on her right hand ,symbolizing their forever lasting friendship.
This book took me through every type of emotion there is. Great change was made among the characters. It was a book that all would enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Ann Packer works at her craft and it shows.
Review: We had George Eliot, the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen to give us exquisitely memorable characters and now we have Ann Packer. She not only gives us characters such as the main character, Carrie, who is the first person narrator but Carrie's two lovers, Mike and Kilroy. Don't forget the rest of the cast. All of them are unforgettable. I am still imagining them a week after I finished the novel, something which is the test of a good book. Kilroy says at one point, when Carrie is worrying about the age old question of "loves me, loves me not" that he was just "blown away" by her (this from a cynical man who isn't blown away by anything until then). I thought to myself, "I'm blown away by her too. I'm in love!" In love with Carrie the character and Ann Packer, the writer. Ann has it all as a writer. Not only does she get her characters and her dialogue down pat but she also has smell, sight, taste and sound all just right. I have walked around Manhattan just like Carrie has and I have visited Madison, Wisconsin, Carrie's home town. Ann Packer's place descriptions are as real as the cities themselves. Oh, the story. I almost forgot about the story in savoring the characters and the places sentence by sentence. The story is so true to life, I ached from watching the events unfold. It is a page turner but different from a crime novel page turner. There is more at stake here. Old fashioned things like love, honor, duty, morality, goodness are all up for grabs in this story but all of them are put down there in the details of the story. Ann Packer resists the temptation to preach. She lets her characters speak for themselves and she does the same thing with her story. This story unfolds by itself with the same brutal honesty Carrie has about herself. I liked the ending. I liked everything about this book. It's going to be on my Christmas list for all kinds of people. Thank you, Ann, for working so very hard on this book. I hope you do the same for your next and your next and your next.
Rating:
Summary: Not up to the mark
Review: It was hard to relate to Carrie. She did not seem to know what she wanted, just floating around and behaving irrationally with scant care about hurting people who loved her. Whenever she felt guilty and confused, all she could muttered was "I'm sorry." I got so fed up with her apologies, which were the only line the author could thought of at every critical juncture and offered nothing else. It also means that the readers became no wiser of what was ticking Carrie, except writing her off as a confused and unreliable drifter in life. I was especially irritated when Carrie put off going back to Madison, and later New York, with the excuse that she was not ready. It was as if the rest of the people who cared about her did not matter a bit while she was procrastinating, as if the the world stood still while she was making up her mind. Her offhanded treatment of her relationships was almost curt and cruel. Habitually, she just let things drifted, until someone couldn't stand it anymore and make an ultimatum or simply cut off relationship with her. Either that, or she made a 180 degree turn to reverse her decision at the last minute. The author should try harder to provide a more palatable plot twists.
Kilroy had the potential to be an interesting character, a source to enlighten and sort out the confusion of Carrie's choices and how to live. He had some thought-provoking ideas about life. But the author seemed to restrain his character artificially by keeping him a mystery.
The idea offered a lot of potential to explore about choices in life but the author barely scratched the surface, leaving the readers disappointed. The effort appeared to have started with something big in mind but lack the imagination and depth to deliver, ended up looking pretentious and incoherent.
Rating:
Summary: Graet author. Now here's the but.
Review: This really was a well written novel. But, in many ways I think it simplified the personal plight of one of the most important secondary characters, Mike. And, you really get sick of the poor me attitude, which I understand is the whole premise of the book, of the main character. I just wanted her to DO something and stop whining. So, if you're looking for a likable main character, Packer's 'Dive' isn't the book to read. I would definitely read more of Packer, but hope that I don't have disdain toward her future characters. It's frustrating to want to slap the main character around through the whole read.
| 
