Songs Without Words - Hardcover

Packer, Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375412816 ISBN 13: 9780375412813

Publisher: Knopf, 2007

Synopsis

Ann Packer’s debut novel, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, was a nationwide best seller that established her as one of our most gifted chroniclers of the interior lives of women. Now, in her long-awaited second novel, she takes us on a journey into a lifelong friendship pushed to the breaking point. Expertly, with the keen introspection and psychological nuance that are her hallmarks, she explores what happens when there are inequities between friends and when the hard-won balances of a long relationship are disturbed, perhaps irreparably, by a harrowing crisis.

Liz and Sarabeth were childhood neighbors in the suburbs of northern California, brought as close as sisters by the suicide of Sarabeth’s mother when the girls were just sixteen. In the decades that followed—through Liz’s marriage and the birth of her children, through Sarabeth’s attempts to make a happy life for herself despite the shadow cast by her mother’s act—their relationship remained a source of continuity and strength. But when Liz’s adolescent daughter enters dangerous waters that threaten to engulf the family, the fault lines in the women’s friendship are revealed, and both Liz and Sarabeth are forced to reexamine their most deeply held beliefs about their connection. Songs Without Words is about the sometimes confining roles we take on in our closest relationships, about the familial myths that shape us both as children and as parents, and about the limits—and the power—of the friendships we create when we are young.

Once again, Ann Packer has written a novel of singular force and complexity: thoughtful, moving, and absolutely gripping, it more than confirms her prodigious literary gifts.

About this title

About the Author

Ann Packer received a Great Lakes Book Award and the Kate Chopin Literary Award for The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, a national best seller that has been translated into ten languages. Also the author of Mendocino and Other Stories, she lives in northern California with her family.

Reviews

Reviewed by Carrie Brown

Ann Packer has been looking in our windows. The majority of readers of contemporary literary fiction in America -- especially fiction written by women -- are women themselves, and in her new novel, Songs Without Words, Packer has tapped into the things that worry many of these readers: love and satisfaction in their relationships, the emotional and psychological health of their offspring, the terrible possibility of spiritual and familial dissolution. Songs Without Words describes a childhood friendship tested by the challenges of adult lives that bear the friends along separate paths. Packer solidifies the reputation she established in the enormously successful The Dive from Clausen's Pier as an uncannily observant chronicler of contemporary American domestic life. Songs Without Words touches every nerve exposed by the solidly middle-class dilemmas of today's parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and lovers. There are no wars or plagues here, no suicide bombers or political turmoil. Instead, there is the fraught landscape of suburban life with its troubling questions about marriage, parenthood, friendship and fulfillment.

Packer is no ironist; she is not Claire Messud or Zadie Smith, whose most recent novels unspool under the cool panoramic gaze of a social critic. The characters in Packer's novels are not so much exposed as they are understood -- understood and seen, in all the psychological sense of that word. Packer is devoted to her characters, and it is her pleasure as a novelist -- and ours as her readers -- to watch these people move through the intensely familiar and intimate hours of their days and nights, spooning coffee into the Krups, taking a bath, crawling into bed. Packer follows them from bedroom to kitchen to bathroom (and to the car and the grocery store and Starbucks and the mall), and her pursuit is so unnervingly attentive that it becomes revelatory. Middle-of-the-night readers -- and there will be lots of them -- who cannot put down Songs Without Words will surely look up at the darkest hour with the sense that they are being watched.

The first paragraph of the novel is one of those lovely moments in fiction when a writer conjures in just a few sentences, with just a few images, the entire universe of the story that is about to unfold. The scene feels both like a presage of things to come and, in its quiet, painterly composition, like a metaphor -- of what, at first, we are not exactly sure, of course, but the world Packer evokes here is the familiar beauty-crossed-with-loneliness of the suburban evening. (Countless writers have been drawn to this moment, most famously perhaps James Agee in the opening scene of his novel A Death in the Family). Here is Packer's beginning:

"Each evening, the streetlights came on at dusk, and the view out the window changed, from barely glowing kitchens and TV rooms to the houses that contained them, and to the trees that sheltered the houses. It seemed to Sarabeth that for a little while there was a kind of balance out there, an equilibrium. But then, quickly, darkness came down from the sky, and soon the lit rooms returned to prominence, and finally everything else was black, and the world seemed limited to a few bright windows on a street in Palo Alto."

Sarabeth and Liz grew up across the street from each other, their girlhood friendship deepened by the tragedy of Sarabeth's mother's suicide when the girls were in high school. Packer offers their history in a brief prologue, and the first chapter of the novel finds Liz married with two teenaged children and contentedly immersed in her roles as wife and mother.

Sarabeth, on the other hand, is still single, uncertain about her life and pursuing a career as a house stager, someone who creates the ambiance of cozy domesticity in homes people are trying to sell, a job that seems like a painful destiny for someone whose own childhood was interrupted by domestic tragedy.

Of the two, Liz appears to have it all, but when her 15-year-old daughter, Lauren -- the novel's most heartbreaking portrait -- falls into the grip of adolescent depression, Liz's world falls apart. And so does Sarabeth's; Lauren's unhappiness brings Sarabeth dangerously near to the memory of her own mother, and her retreat from Liz is both cowardly and -- this is Packer's generosity at work -- completely understandable. The only thing that can drive old friends apart more surely than death is unhappiness, and it seems that Liz and Sarabeth's estrangement will separate them permanently. "They all seemed irrevocably distant, the people she knew," Sarabeth thinks, "as far away as Earth was from the moon." There are some novels that show us the "other," and in doing so expand our ideas about humanity. Songs Without Words is a novel that shows us -- tenderly, and with a full awareness of the precious dignity and indignity of human experience -- ourselves.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Ann Packer stunned critics with her debut novel, the acclaimed Dive From Clausen's Pier (2002). Songs inevitably raised comparisons to this first novel's exploration of how crises of untold proportions test love and lead to guilt, despair, and morally ambiguous actions. Critics agreed that Packer deftly unravels the emotional intensity that accompanies the love between two adult friends and offers shrewd insight into human behavior. However, Songs didn't garner quite the same praise as Dive. A few critics cited stereotyped male characters, uneven third-person perspectives, and a predictable story line that gets bogged down in quotidian details. All reviewers, however, praised the characterization of Lauren-and her all-too-real teen anguish.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Packer follows her well-received first novel, The Dive from Clausen's Pier, with a richly nuanced meditation on the place of friendship in women's lives. Liz and Sarabeth's childhood friendship deepened following Sarabeth's mother's suicide when the girls were 16; now the two women are in their 40s and living in the Bay Area. Responsible mother-of-two Liz has come to see eccentric, bohemian Sarabeth, with her tendency to enter into inappropriate relationships with men, as more like another child than as a sister or mutually supportive friend. When Liz's teenage daughter, Lauren, perpetuates a crisis, Liz doubts her parenting abilities; Sarabeth is plunged into uncomfortable memories; and the hidden fragilities of what seemed a steadfast relationship come to the fore. Packer adroitly navigates Lauren's teen despair, Sarabeth's lonely longings and Liz's feelings of guilt and inadequacy. Although Liz's husband, Brody, and other men in the book are less than compelling, Packer gets deep into the perspectives of Liz, Sarabeth and Lauren, and follows out their conflicts with an unsentimental sympathy. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Packer was widely praised for her debut, the best-selling Dive from Clausen's Pier (2002). Her sophomore effort is slow-moving but ambitious and relates the lifelong friendship of Liz and Sarabeth. When her mom committed suicide 30 years ago, Sarabeth moved in with Liz, finding a safe haven with Liz's warm and nurturing family. But now it's Liz who is in need of comfort, following the suicide attempt of her depressed 15-year-old daughter, Lauren. For Sarabeth, however, the traumatic incident triggers old memories and "distant music, familiar and sad. A song without words." She doesn't call or visit for days afterward, and Liz feels shut out and let down. All of their dissimilarities emerge: Liz is the staid stay-at-home suburban mom, while Sarabeth is the artsy, single urbanite. Meanwhile, Liz's husband, Brody, and son, Joe, deal with Lauren's illness in totally different ways, leading to a rift in the marriage and the family. Packer is most interested in the emotional arc of a troubled friendship and the debilitating nature of depression. As a result, her plot lacks momentum, with many paragraphs devoted to the more mundane aspects of life, right down to the number of abdominal reps Liz does in her Pilates class. Still, the friends' ultimate reconciliation and Lauren's emotional breakthrough provide some touching scenes and a welcome resolution. Although it's not on a par with her debut, this flawed but sensitive novel should appeal to fans of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold. Wilkinson, Joanne

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Six o’clock in the morning. It was one of Liz’s favorite times of day: everyone else asleep, Brody still motionless in the bed she’d just left, the kids upstairs, in sleep not teenagers anymore but simply larger versions of their younger, childish selves, who, she could almost believe, would wake and seek her for body comfort, as they used to. They were thirteen and fifteen, but she could still open their doors and look at them sleeping: how Joe lay on his back with half his blankets kicked to the side, his mouth slightly open; how Lauren folded her limbs in close, her head sandwiched between two pillows, a fist curled under her chin.

In the kitchen, Liz spooned coffee into the Krups and leaned in for a whiff of the dark, rich smell. She got out four plates and four juice glasses. Moving to the calendar, she did a quick pro forma check of the day, but she knew: soccer practice for Joe, and Brody home a little on the late side because of his tennis game. Lauren did nothing after school this year, and Liz had taken to planning labor-intensive dinners so she’d be in the kitchen if Lauren wanted her. Jambalaya tonight? She’d go grocery shopping after her yoga class.

Outside, the newspaper lay on the lawn, its plastic wrapper wet with dew. She bent over for it, then looked up and down the street. The houses in this neighborhood were at once ample and modest, with lovingly tended small front yards. Sixteen years ago, buying here had seemed a compromise: it wasn’t Palo Alto, but it was nice, and the schools were good, and she and Brody reassured themselves that Palo Alto would still be there when they had more money. Now they had more money, but they stayed. They were comfortable here. It was home.

She left the paper in the kitchen and tiptoed through the bedroom to the bathroom. She loved the first blast of the shower on her face; she opened her mouth and used her hands to cup water at her cheeks, her eyes. She massaged shampoo into her scalp, then turned and let the water course through her hair. When she turned back it beat at her nipples, and she twisted them, felt a tingling between her legs. It had been a while since she and Brody had made love, and she was ready. Was he? They were a little out of sync, she sometimes felt.

In the bedroom she began to dress, opening drawers as quietly as she could, though he was beginning to stir.

“Time is it?” he muttered after a short while.

She turned around, saw he hadn’t moved. “About six-thirty.”

He raised himself up and looked at her, then sank down and lay on his back. She skirted the bed and sat near him on the edge of the mattress. His chest was bare, and she laid her hand over his breastbone, its bloom of graying hairs.

“OK,” he said, covering her hand with his own.

“OK,” she said with a smile.

She left him and went upstairs to the kids. Lauren was likely to be awake already, and Liz hesitated, then turned the doorknob slowly. She pushed the door open but waited a moment before moving over the threshold.

Lauren was on her back, looking at the door. It seemed to Liz that she had been waiting for this moment, had even girded herself for it: pulling the covers all the way to her chin, making sure her head was in the very center of her pillow. She stared hard at Liz but didn’t speak.

“Morning, sweetie,” Liz said, but still Lauren didn’t speak, didn’t react at all. Something was going on with her these days, Liz didn’t know what. It was almost as if the last three years had never happened, and she was still twelve: sullen and aggrieved. Though Friday night she’d abruptly changed her mind about spending Saturday in Berkeley with some friends, and Liz knew that at twelve Lauren never would have canceled anything involving even one other girl.

“Almost time to get up,” Liz said now.

“I know,” Lauren said with a sneer. “I’m not stupid.”

Liz pulled the door to and headed for Joe’s room. Lauren’s tone seemed to have lodged inside her: she felt it harden like a fast-drying coat of shellac on her lungs. Outside Joe’s room she took a deep, slow breath to break it up.

Long ago she’d replaced Joe’s curtains with blackout shades, and it was very dark in his room, the only light coming from the hallway behind her. She crossed to his bed and sat down. Already he’d turned off the alarm clock that he set, every night, for six-thirty. He was crafty, never just hitting the snooze button but actually sliding the setting to off.

“Joe,” she said. His head was turned to the wall, and she put a hand on his shoulder and shook it a little. “Joe.”

He burrowed deeper, and as always she felt torn: she wanted to adjust the covers over him, to encourage his sleep, make his bed the nicest place possible; and she wanted, needed, to get him up.

She shook his shoulder again. “Joe.”

“I’m awake.”

“Right.”

“I am. I swear.”

She patted his shoulder and left the room, knowing she’d come again in five minutes. She tried hard to make them independent, but there was a cost to her, and some things she couldn’t give up. Yet.

In the kitchen she began breakfast. She sliced a pear into a bowl of blackberries, unwrapped a loaf of challah, and cut it into thick slices. She put jam and honey on the table, then went back to Joe.

“It’s time,” she said to his sleeping body.

He hunkered farther, bringing the covers over his face.

“It’s time,” she said again, shaking his shoulder. “It’s almost seven.”

“Urf,” he moaned, but the position of his body changed, and after a while she could tell he was awake. “No,” he said.

“I’m afraid so.” She tweaked his foot and then left the room and headed toward Lauren’s nearly closed door, but before she could speak Lauren’s voice came at her, brusque and preemptive: “Mom, I’m up!”

Liz retreated. Down in the kitchen again, she put challah slices in the toaster and poured herself a second cup of coffee. She sometimes regretted the second cup at yoga, but she missed it too much when she skipped it.

In a few minutes Lauren came into the kitchen. She moved slowly, and her unbrushed hair fell in clumps past her shoulders, collected in the hood of her oversize gray sweatshirt. “Sweetie,” Liz said without meaning to, and Lauren gave her a sour look.

“What?”

“Nothing. Hi.” Liz put a second round of bread in the toaster and watched in her peripheral vision as Lauren moved around the table and pulled out her chair. When the toaster popped, Liz buttered the new slices, put them all on a plate, and took them to the table. “Here we go.”

Lauren reached for a piece of toast and took a bite, and Liz thought, You’re welcome. Then she wished she could unthink it. She hated how pissy she felt—it wasn’t the kind of mother she wanted to be.

Brody came in, dressed in a white shirt and tie, and she remembered that he’d mentioned a meeting out of the office today. He passed close by her on his way to the coffeemaker, and she caught a whiff of his soap smell, watched as he found a mug and pulled the coffeepot out of its base. His nice broad back seemed broader in the white shirt. He turned and faced her for his first sip, and she thought about how much it had always pleased her to see him in a dress shirt and tie. That’s because he reminds you of your father, Sarabeth had remarked about this, in her usual perspicacious way.

Now Joe arrived, reaching for a slice of challah before he’d even sat down, then consuming it in two bites and chasing it with a large gulp of juice. He’d shot up over the summer, and he was gangly now, with enormous wrists. She took her seat and watched as he helped himself to fruit, took more toast, pulled his juice glass a little closer: gathered what he needed to stock himself for the day.

He looked up at her as he stabbed a pear slice. “Are you driving us to practice?”

“I’m not sure yet,” she said. “I’ll drop your gear at Trent’s if I’m not. Are you packed?”

“How is our friend Trent?” Brody said as he came over and sat down. “That was quite a play he made on Saturday. That kid can kick.” He unfolded his napkin and then unfolded it again and tucked a corner into his collar. He turned to Lauren and said, “Did you know that the entire purpose of the necktie used to be to protect the shirt? Now we have to protect the protector!”

“That’s the fullback’s job in soccer,” Joe said, and Brody winked at Liz as he turned back to Joe.

“You’re quick this morning.”

“No, I’m not,” Joe said, but he smiled with pleasure, a wash of color high on each cheek.

Liz looked at Lauren. She was spaced out, her expression vacant as she played with one of the many thick silver rings she wore. Let’s try again, Liz thought, but she wasn’t sure how.

“You could get one of those plastic ties,” Joe said. “Like for a Halloween costume.”

“Maybe I will,” Brody said. “That could solve all kinds of problems.” He smiled at Liz again and reached for the challah, and she saw there was only one piece left.

She said, “Oops, sorry, I’ll get some more of that.”

He shrugged. “I can.”

“No, no, I will.” She slid the last slice onto his plate and went back to the toaster, thinking for a moment that this wasn’t the best model for Lauren—or Joe, for t...

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375412816
• ISBN 13: 9780375412813
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352