Songs Without Words

Ann Packer's debut novel, "The Dive from Clausen's Pier, " was a nationwide bestseller 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. 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.

Review :
Praise for Ann Packer's "Songs Without Words "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 " "A hauntingly believable portrait of grief. . . . [Packer] shows us that grief is not, for better or for worse, a solitary affair. . . . Slowly and carefully, Packer shows her characters putting their lives back together after a traumatizing blow. . . . The two old friends' moving reconciliation closes a quiet narrative whose emotions, we come to realize, run deep and true. . . . Commendably ambitious and ultimately rewarding." --"Kirkus Reviews " "Welcome back to Packer country, a richly psychological terrain where finding the balance between responsibility to others and obligation to oneself is never obvious or easy. . . . Engrossing, forgiving and quietly wise, "Songs" never makes a false step as Packer keeps both the pages and her readers' minds turning until the very end." --"People " "As in "The Dive From Clausen's Pier, "Packer makes the ripples from one act so involving, you can't pull away." --"Good Housekeeping " "A richly nuanced meditation on the place of friendship in women's lives. . . . Packer gets deep into the perspectives of Liz, Sarabeth and Lauren, and follows out their conflicts with an unsentimental sympathy." --"Publishers Weekly " "Packer writes about adult female friendship with a nuanced understanding of its emotional intensity. . . . One of Packer's strengths as a writer is her ability to subtly shift tone and voice to bring us into the interior of very different characters. The narrative moves with ease." --"Los Angeles Times Book Review " "A close and careful l