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The Dive From Clausen's Pier

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The Dive From Clausen's Pier

By: Ann Packer
Narrated by: Scarlett Johansson
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About this listen

 A suspenseful, richly layered first novel that asks: How much do we owe the people we love?

THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER will speak to all those who have ever thought about leaving when they knew they should stay, anyone who has ever felt trapped, not only by circumstance, but by the strength of their own love, Carrie Bell has lived in Wisconsin all her life. She's had the same best friend, the same good relationship with her mother, the same boyfriend, for as long as anyone can remember. But when her fiance, Mike is paralyzed by a tragic accident, Carrie has to question everything she thought she knew about herself and about the meaning of home.

Ann Packer has written a morally complex, deeply satisfying novel about the desire to live fully and the conflict between who we want to be to others and who we must be for ourselves. A magnificent debut from a remarkable new talent.©2002 Ann Packer; (P)2002 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc. Classics Contemporary Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction

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Critic reviews

"The novels it calls most to mind. . . . are Allegra Goodman's 'Kaaterskill Falls' and Sue Miller's 'The Good Mother'. . . .its most admirable trait -- and surely the one that will define Packer's future work -- is its moral authenticity." --Gail Caldwell, Boston Globe

"The Dive from Clausen's Pier is one of those small miracles that reinforce our faith in fiction. It does what the best novels so often do, making the largest things visible by its perfect rendering of life on the smaller scale. It is witty, tragic and touching, and beguiling from the first page." --Scott Turow

"A reflective and probing first novel...there's not a false note in the story's tentative resolution, which thwarts our initial expectations in order to satisfy more complex demands...Very fine fiction indeed." --Kirkus Reviews

"This is the sort of book one reads dying to know what happens to the characters, but loves for its wisdom: it sees the world with more clarity than you do." --Publishers Weekly

"Ann Packer’s first novel has all the weight of reality, tooled with a jeweler’s precision. The Dive from Clausen's Pier is a poignant and painstakingly rendered account of a woman in flight from catastrophe, in search of herself."--Madison Smartt Bell
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The story starts well albeit sadly, but then drifts into mundane nothingness with little going on other than aspects of life from a human point of view including love, loss, guilt, uncertainty, I found it dull. Characters for me were stale - neither likeable or dislikeable. The narration is superb and if it wasn't for this, i would have given up on the book.

Slow& boring story / great narrator

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Beautifully written, really takes you into Carries world and how she felt.
Wonderful descriptions of New York and her characters in the book.

Great read

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