When Ann Packer's 2002 debut novel, The Dive from Clausen's Pier, was published not only to critical praise (PW's review called it "engrossing" and "complex and subtly constructed") but also to a tremendous popular reception--it sold 220,000 copies in hardcover and 327,000 in paper--no one was more surprised than the author herself. "It was the last thing I expected," Packer remarks, "but it was thrilling and life-changing in a lot of ways."
It's not that Packer was a complete unknown in the literary community prior to Dive. Her short stories, which have been published in The New Yorker and Ploughshares, among other publications, had earned Packer honors including an O. Henry Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. But when Packer's first novel debuted at #9 on the New York Times bestseller list, and especially when television's Good Morning America chose Dive as the first selection for its "Read This!" book club, Packer admits the popular attention was "mind-boggling."
With her second novel, Songs without Words, how can Packer measure up to her freshman success? Well, she says, she probably can't. "I was lucky that the response to the first book was so extremely great, because I knew from the outset that that level of response was unlikely with this second book.,' Packer says. "So I was able to relax and just write."
Like Dive, Songs without Words explores how tragedy—or near-tragedy—changes lives in sudden and often unexpected ways. The novel focuses on the life-long friendship of two women, Liz and Sarabeth, now in their late thirties. When a crisis strikes Liz's family, the two women uncover hidden assumptions and weaknesses that threaten to tear their friendship apart.
Packer's father, a Stanford law professor, was paralyzed by a stroke when she was a child. Four years later, he took his own life. Packer acknowledges that although she does not consciously work through her own emotional issues in her fiction, "I did have imprinted on me the idea of trauma that changes things dramatically and suddenly. As a writer I return to that again and again because it fascinates me, and it's where I come from in a sense."
Dive has sparked vigorous debates in the many book groups that have read it, with members responding vigorously and passionately to the choices its protagonist Carrie makes, often falling into "pro-Carrie" and "anti-Carrie" factions. Packer suspects that a similar phenomenon may happen with the new book: "I have a hunch that readers may divide into camps, expressing loyalty either to Liz or to Sarabeth."
Following a publicity tour for Songs Without Words, Packer will return to work on her next project, a collection of short stories and a novella. These shorter pieces will continue to explore themes of loss and redemption, as well as how tragic events affect people's relationships and how they care for one another. Packer sums up her approach to these themes by returning to a question that encapsulated the central dilemma of The Dive from Clausen's Pier: "How much do we owe the people we love?" Packer muses, "Now I would add a follow-up question: How do we cope with the fact that we can't necessarily give the people we love what they need?"
