April 15, 2007

  • The Dive From Clausen's Pier

    Due to having a very poor memory sometimes, I've decided to try and jot down a few notes about books that I've read to help me remember.  The Dive From Clausen's Pier immediately starts off with the protagonist, Carrie Bell, facing a moral dilemma of whether or not to stay with her boyfriend, Mike, of many years after an accident which has left him wheelchair bound for the remainder of his life.  She had already been contemplating ending the relationship before the accident but would she now have the heart to do this given the current situation?  Carrie ends up retreating not only from Mike, but from the rest of her family and friends.  Abruptly, she uproots herself from Madison, Wisconsin and drives through the night to New York City to escape everyone.  Carrie herself was similarly abandoned at the age of 3 by her father and Ann Packer uses this as a precedent.

    I was glad the scene shifted from Madison to NY since the plot had started to stagnant for me.  Packer captures the spirit of NY very well in her writing and brought back my own memories of first moving into the city.  Carrie falls in love with an older man but the reader never believes that they have a real connection.  Kilroy, the older man, has secrets and issues of his own to deal with but Packer doesn't elaborate much on this topic.  It's a frustrating relationship to watch develop as you do not understand why Carrie would put up with Kilroy's moody cloud of secrecy.  I can understand her need for a father figure and perhaps that's what she was getting out of the relationship. 

    There were some raunchy sex scenes between Carrie and Kilroy thrown in which I did not find believable in the least.  Out of nowhere, Carrie had an insatiable appetite for sex which didn't make any sense coming from her conservative midwestern background and having only slept with her high school sweetheart.  There was nothing in her personality which would suggest this which leaves you to feel that the sex scenes were merely gratuitous.  I can only guess she had a desperate need to be close to someone after pulling herself so far away from family and friends.

    Packer uses many cliches in her writing.  For example, one part of the book has the characters playing a name game and saying that a person can turn out to personify their own name.  So Carrie 'carries' around a lot of burden.  It's just laughable!  And Carrie is a talented seamstress and there are many passages describing the process of her sewing in great detail.  Packer is using this as a metaphor for her life.  Weaving her way through it.  Also, laughable. 

    You're compelled to read through to the end if you wish to find out the ultimate decision that Carrie makes.  To stay in NY with Kilroy or return home and 'patch' (another sewing reference, ha!) things up with Mike?  The ending of the book is disappointing, though, and doesn't leave you with a sense that Carrie really stands behind the decision that she has made.

    The book was interesting enough for me to have made it through.  I'm not a believer in forcing myself to read books through to the end.  But having such an unlikeable protagonist and the slow pace of the story would be off putting to some.