Songs Without Words
By Ann Packer
(Vintage, Paperback, 9780375727177, 384pp.)
Publication Date: July 29, 2008
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Hardcover, Paperback, Compact Disc
Categories: Literary
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Liz and Sarabeth were girlhood neighbors in the suburbs of Northern California, brought as close as sisters by the suicide of Sarabeth's mother. In the decades that followed, their relationship remained a source of continuity and strength. But when Liz's adolescent daughter enters dangerous waters, the women's friendship takes a devastating turn, forcing Liz and Sarabeth to question their most deeply held beliefs about their connection. From the bestselling author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier, Songs Without Words is the gripping story of a lifelong friendship pushed to the breaking point.
Ann Packer received the Great Lakes Book Award for The Dive from Clausen's Pier, which was a national bestseller. She is also the author of Mendocino and Other Stories. She is a past recipient of a James Michener award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and other magazines, as well as in Prize Stories 1992: The O. Henry Awards. She lives in northern California with her family.
www.annpacker.com
1. Ann Packer has been praised for the lifelike quality of her fiction. Do you feel that the friendship depicted here seems especially true to life? Do you find yourself choosing sides with either Liz or Sarabeth?
“Packer's voice [has] extraordinary authority. . . . Compassionate, rich in solace.” —The New York Times Book Review“Engrossing, forgiving and quietly wise. . . . Packer keeps both the pages and her readers' minds turning until the very end." —People“Packer has an unnerving ability to gaze steadily at feelings you can barely acknowledge even to yourself. . . . You are grateful for Packer's insight, refreshed and comforted by the depth of her empathy.” —Newsday“Songs Without Words is an eloquent, on occasion harrowing account of friendship and its limits, the mind and its fatal fragilities, and the saving graces of human nature. Packer captures mental pathologies exceptionally well and writes beautifully about despair and love and how they travel together throughout a lifetime.” —Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind
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