The Dive from Clausen's Pier : A Novel [Import] [Paperback]

Ann Packer (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Incorporated; Advance reader's Edition edition (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0749933313
• ISBN-13: 978-0749933319
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (419 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,345,012 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

154 of 178 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Starts great, takes a dive, May 26, 2002

By 

JoAnne Goldberg (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dive From Clausen's Pier (Hardcover)

Packer starts her ambitious novel with a picture-perfect prologue: in spare, elegant prose she sets the scene and sends her protagonist's boyfriend to his quadriplegic fate. She takes the reader inside Carrie's head, and her strong writing keeps us engaged as Carrie and friends wait for Mike to emerge from his coma and as Carrie dithers over whether or not she'll look like a creep if she dumps Mike now. Packer has populated her story with a few interesting people--the therapist mom, the co-dependent friend, Mike's pal Rooster--so we forgive the lack of plot and the lack of character development.

Abruptly, the book switches directions. (Perhaps Packer decided that readers must be as bored with Madison as she and Carrie were.) Without warning to mom, friends, fiance, or the reader, Carrie jumps in her car and drives to New York. (Apparently young women never meet with foul play in Madison--Carrie's mom and friends don't seem concerned about her disappearance--they all somehow know that she skipped town because she didn't want to deal with her feelings about Mike.)

Packer's leisurely style becomes lethargic once Carrie hits the Big Apple, where she quickly acquires a free place to live, the stereotypical gay buddy, and an enigmatic boyfriend, Kilroy. Except he's not an interesting enigma; Carrie never figures out what makes him tick, and neither do we. What's more, it's hard to care, or to understand what she sees in him. Nor does New York feel "real." Packer, who excels in portraying Madison, fails to capture any of the essence of the big city.

The reader is still inside Carrie's head, but not a lot seems to be going on there. Much of her behavior is inexplicable. For example: she's planning to come to Madison for a visit (Rooster's wedding). Being a talented seamstress, she buys the most gorgeous, expensive fabric in the most upscale fabric store in New York and fashions a stunning outfit for herself. Then, at the last moment, she decides not to go. This scene, which could (and should) have some emotional depth--might even explain Carrie's internal state of disrepair--is simply flat.

Finally, Carrie comes home to Madison (she never should have left) and the story picks up again--but by then I was tired of her whining, her lack of insight, her poor impulse control, and her inability to learn from her past mistakes.

Other reviewers have mentioned the sex scenes. I suspect that a well-meaning friend or editor told Packer that she needed to spice up her book, and that's why she inflicted these embarrassing and ineptly written episodes on her readers.

Bottom line: not awful, not great, could have been better.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Jung at Heart, April 10, 2003

By 

Literary Lass "neocat_08840" (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dive From Clausen's Pier (Hardcover)

Ann Packer's THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER is a fascinating exercise in philosophical meanderings. While reading the novel, after finishing its last page, even when typing a review on-line, one can't help but wonder "What would I do? How would I react to my finace's paralysis?" Heavy ponderings, deep moral discussions, and unfortunately, a rather shallow literary style and character development.

This was an odd reading experience for me. Mirroring the heroine's crisis of ethics and morality--Should she stay with her crippled boyfriend or forge a new life?--it was almost as if the author, too, was trying to flesh out a novel while typing it. Every page seemed to cry out, "What if I wrote a book about a girl who had to decide whether to stay or go?"

According to the book flap, the author is an award winner and an accomplished short story writer. Perhaps that's the problem she encountered here. The conceit of this book is terrific--challenging the heroine and reader to examine what is right vs. what is doable. However, it doesn't survive a nearly 400-page treatment.

The characters are all one-dimensional. Even heroine Carrie Bell, who literally appears on every page, never grows beyond a fetching Midwestern girl who dated too young and too exclusively, and who sure loves to sew. I imagine her need to mend and to alter, to measure and to seam together, is a metaphor for her desire to reshape and re-examine her past and future decisions. Perhaps in a 40-page short story, that would be a strong, though somewhat corny, device. Here, in a novel format, the constant excursions to the fabric store and her sit-downs behind the sewing machine are clunky and embarrassing. It's especially hokey because so many times the outifits that Carrie is supposedly creating sound positively horrid and outdated, yet her old and new crowd of friends christen her the next Betsey Johnson cum Stella McCartney. Not very likely from the really stodgy descriptions of her ensembles.

I don't know how to position a book like this. It's not really serious literature, and it's not tempestuous enough to be a romance novel. It's sort of a "chick flick" meets Freud or Hume (or name any other philosopher/shrink of your choice). I suppose that's the genius of this book. I can't say it was well written, but at least it was written. For all those armchair authors out there, take inspiration from this novel. You don't have to create realistic characters, clever dialogue; you don't have to have memorable scenes or appealing supporting players. As long as you throw in some recognizable brand names, a few "hip" slang words, and some nontraditional traditional characters (a gay best friend, a gay roommate, a gay black fashionista), you can get published.

The true key to this book's success is the philosophical quagmire it dares to wade into: Are we all put on this earth to be kind to others or kind to ourselves? Are we supposed to sacrifice our happiness for others or do we learn how to share a little while losing a lot?

This is a great book for a philosophy curriculum or a local book club. It will definitely get you thinking. Or, if you've just dived into analysis, this could be a conduit for self-examination and a pleasant way to fill your 50 minutes on the couch. In terms of being a well-written, entertaining book, it floats somewhere between being a YA novel about growing up and cutting ties with home and a Ladies' Home Journal bit of fiction. The people who populate the pages are all types and never go beyond that. The ultimate decision between Carrie's injured boyfriend, who was growing tiresome to her even before the diving accident, and her new New York City lover, Kilroy, an older man who loves to play mind games, practices head trips, and seems to be a bit of a control freak, is a ghastly Hobson's Choice. The heroine has to contend with whether she should spend her life as a nursemaid/martyr or a protege/emotional punching bag. Great dilemma.

Pick up this book if you want to think about your own role in this tortured melodrama. Perhaps it will inspire you to start your own manuscript or your own game of "What If?" Just think--maybe if you come up with a brain-teasing moral quandry and keep at if for 300 pages, you too can get a literary agent, and what if . . .

43 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well, it wasn't terrible..., May 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Dive From Clausen's Pier (Hardcover)

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"?