The Dive From Clausen's Pier

The Dive From Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer Why is it so much easier for me to write about what I dislike about a book/movie/tv show than what I like? Actually, it's not even that it's more difficult to write about it, it's just more difficult to identify exactly what I like or why I like it. I really liked The Dive From Clausen's Pier (for a description, check out Amazon's listing), but it's hard to put my finger on why. Watch me try, though.


This story just seems so authentic to me. Strange that I found a book about unhappy marriages to be so false, but one about a woman’s fiancé being paralyzed in a diving accident to ring so true. I’m sure the odds are actually in favor of the unhappy marriage occurring in real life. Perhaps because, aside from her fiancé becoming a paraplegic and her subsequent running away to New York, Carrie Bell’s life, and the way it is related through this novel, is so ordinary. Carrie goes shopping, she hangs out with her roommates in the kitchen, she cooks dinner, she sews…it’s all so…normal. And yet, that sounds boring. Somehow, Ann Packer kept me interested in reading about Carrie’s day-to-day life. Something about living that “normal” life in the wake of something so clearly tragic and out-of-the-ordinary…

I also like that this book challenged me a little. Here’s the thing: I really like happy endings. Or at least mostly happy endings. Take, for example, The Time Traveler’s Wife. Yes, I cried and cried and cried at the end. But, Clare and Henry are happy for as long as they can be, and there is some closure at the end. It isn’t like Henry leaves Clare for another woman or something. They never stop being in love. I like that. With The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, there is no “perfect” ending. Carrie has to make a choice (digression: I just caught myself writing about this book in the past tense, something I assume I’ve probably done on this blog before, now that I think about it, and the English major in me cried a little) and neither option is totally ideal nor totally depressing. So, my comfort zone was stretched a little. It’s good for me to expand that zone now and again.

The characters in The Dive From Clausen’s Pier are also very sympathetic. I felt like I could be one of them, almost. I can easily understand why Carrie, after living her whole life in Madison, WI, and dating the same guy throughout high school and their four years at “the U,” feels like she needs to get out of there. Sometimes, I can’t even spend a weekend in Auburn, ME, without wanting to high-tail it out of there, and I haven’t lived there full-time in seven and a half years. And yet, how can you not also be mad at her like Rooster and Jamie? How does someone leave their fiancé after he’s paralyzed in a diving accident (even if the relationship was already on the rocks)? How can Carrie be so caught up in her own drama that she doesn’t do anything about Lynn’s dangerous behavior? The whole story is told from Carrie’s point of view, so I understand how suffocated she feels in Madison, but I also can understand that to everyone else she looks selfish and self-absorbed. And she kind of is. But, I can relate. Personally, I probably would’ve felt too obligated to stay and would never have actually run. But, I would’ve wanted to. And, I would’ve felt guilty for wanting to.

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