Ann Packer – författare

‘A tour de force family drama’ELLE ‘Bursting with poignancy’NEW YORKER ‘Tender, absorbing’ CATHERINE NEWMAN‘First-rate storytelling’ BBC ‘A riveting novel about how family molds us – for good and ill – and the grace that comes with forgiveness’PEOPLE MAGAZINE Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. It is here that he will fall in love with Penny Greenway, build a home and raise a perfect family.Decades later, the lives of the three oldest Blair children are upended by the return of their younger brother, James – the wayward son – whose sudden presence forces to light the siblings' past rivalries and grievances, and sets off a struggle over the family's future.From New York Times bestselling author, Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade explores the secrets, desires and heartbreaks of one Californian family over the course of five decades. **Some Bright Nowhere, the latest novel from Ann Packer is available now** ‘This is a novel with something to teach about forgiving the people we love’NEWSDAY ‘Superb … I’ve rarely read a novel so astute about the jumble of love and respect, rivalry and envy, empathy and scorn that makes up family dynamics’SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE ‘A beautiful novel that will stay with me’ ABRAHAM VERGHESE

'A tour de force family drama'ELLE'Bursting with poignancy'NEW YORKER'Tender, absorbing' CATHERINE NEWMAN'First-rate storytelling' BBC'A riveting novel about how family molds us - for good and ill - and the grace that comes with forgiveness'PEOPLE MAGAZINEBill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. It is here that he will fall in love with Penny Greenway, build a home and raise a perfect family.Decades later, the lives of the three oldest Blair children are upended by the return of their younger brother, James - the wayward son - whose sudden presence forces to light the siblings' past rivalries and grievances, and sets off a struggle over the family's future.From New York Times bestselling author, Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade explores the secrets, desires and heartbreaks of one Californian family over the course of five decades.** Some Bright Nowhere, the latest novel from Ann Packer is available now** This is a novel with something to teach about forgiving the people we love NEWSDAY Superb I ve rarely read a novel so astute about the jumble of love and respect, rivalry and envy, empathy and scorn that makes up family dynamics SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE A beautiful novel that will stay with me ABRAHAM VERGHESE

‘A tour de force family drama’ELLE ‘Bursting with poignancy’NEW YORKER ‘Tender, absorbing’ CATHERINE NEWMAN‘First-rate storytelling’ BBC ‘A riveting novel about how family molds us – for good and ill – and the grace that comes with forgiveness’PEOPLE MAGAZINE Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. It is here that he will fall in love with Penny Greenway, build a home and raise a perfect family.Decades later, the lives of the three oldest Blair children are upended by the return of their younger brother, James – the wayward son – whose sudden presence forces to light the siblings' past rivalries and grievances, and sets off a struggle over the family's future.From New York Times bestselling author, Ann Packer, The Children's Crusade explores the secrets, desires and heartbreaks of one Californian family over the course of five decades. **Some Bright Nowhere, the latest novel from Ann Packer is available now** ‘This is a novel with something to teach about forgiving the people we love’NEWSDAY ‘Superb … I’ve rarely read a novel so astute about the jumble of love and respect, rivalry and envy, empathy and scorn that makes up family dynamics’SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE ‘A beautiful novel that will stay with me’ ABRAHAM VERGHESE

AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ‘One of those rare books that once you’ve finished, comes with you for life’ RACHEL JOYCE‘A moving book … I was enraptured by it’ PHILIPPA PERRY‘Readers, you will shed tears and talk long into the night about this book’ ANDREW SEAN GREER‘A heartbreaking novel that actually made me happy’ MEG WOLITZER An extraordinarily beautiful and life-affirming new novel from one of America's greatest chroniclers of the human heart, Ann Packer. Eliot and his wife Claire have been happily married for nearly four decades. They’ve raised two children in their sleepy Connecticut town and have weathered the inevitable ups and downs that come with a long marriage. Now, eight years into Claire’s cancer diagnosis it’s time to gather their loved ones and prepare for what comes next.Through Claire’s illness, Eliot has willingly and lovingly shifted into the role of caregiver, coming to appreciate the new intimacy this creates. But as he focuses on settling into what will be their last weeks together, Claire makes an unexpected request that leaves him reeling.Ann Packer makes a triumphant return with this beautifully powerful and life-affirming novel. Some Bright Nowhere explores the profound gifts and costs of truly loving someone, and the unexpected feelings we experience as the end of life draws near. ‘As devastating as it is life-affirming’ iPAPER ‘This beautifully written story is going to get you thinking about some things that really matter’ OPRAH WINFREY‘Intimate and devastating;I felt winded, while reading, and unable to look away’ CLAIRE DAVERLEY, author of Talking at Night‘Extraordinary. Books like this are why I love reading’ ELIN HILDERBRAND, author of The Perfect Couple‘I read it in awe and haven't stopped thinking about it since’ CLAIRE POWELL, author of At the Table ‘A moving meditation on love's many forms’ PEOPLE ‘Packer’s gorgeous, deeply involving novel is a suspenseful and radiant reckoning with love, sorrow, and the everlasting mystery of death’BOOKLIST ‘One of those rare books that leaves you feeling altered somehow, like the light has shifted’ HUMA QURESHI, author of Playing Games‘Prose beautiful enough to get you drunk … A triumph’ RUFI THORPE, author of Margo's Got Money Troubles‘I read it feverishly; I lived and mourned with its characters’ AYŞEGÜL SAVAŞ, author of The Anthropologists‘Exquisite … you've never read a novel about marriage quite like this one’ TANIA JAMES, author of Loot

AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ‘One of those rare books that once you’ve finished, comes with you for life’ RACHEL JOYCE‘A moving book … I was enraptured by it’ PHILIPPA PERRY‘Readers, you will shed tears and talk long into the night about this book’ ANDREW SEAN GREER‘A heartbreaking novel that actually made me happy’ MEG WOLITZER An extraordinarily beautiful and life-affirming new novel from one of America's greatest chroniclers of the human heart, Ann Packer. Eliot and his wife Claire have been happily married for nearly four decades. They’ve raised two children in their sleepy Connecticut town and have weathered the inevitable ups and downs that come with a long marriage. Now, eight years into Claire’s cancer diagnosis it’s time to gather their loved ones and prepare for what comes next.Through Claire’s illness, Eliot has willingly and lovingly shifted into the role of caregiver, coming to appreciate the new intimacy this creates. But as he focuses on settling into what will be their last weeks together, Claire makes an unexpected request that leaves him reeling.Ann Packer makes a triumphant return with this beautifully powerful and life-affirming novel. Some Bright Nowhere explores the profound gifts and costs of truly loving someone, and the unexpected feelings we experience as the end of life draws near. ‘As devastating as it is life-affirming’ iPAPER ‘This beautifully written story is going to get you thinking about some things that really matter’ OPRAH WINFREY‘Intimate and devastating;I felt winded, while reading, and unable to look away’ CLAIRE DAVERLEY, author of Talking at Night‘Extraordinary. Books like this are why I love reading’ ELIN HILDERBRAND, author of The Perfect Couple‘I read it in awe and haven't stopped thinking about it since’ CLAIRE POWELL, author of At the Table ‘A moving meditation on love's many forms’ PEOPLE ‘Packer’s gorgeous, deeply involving novel is a suspenseful and radiant reckoning with love, sorrow, and the everlasting mystery of death’BOOKLIST ‘One of those rare books that leaves you feeling altered somehow, like the light has shifted’ HUMA QURESHI, author of Playing Games‘Prose beautiful enough to get you drunk … A triumph’ RUFI THORPE, author of Margo's Got Money Troubles‘I read it feverishly; I lived and mourned with its characters’ AYŞEGÜL SAVAŞ, author of The Anthropologists‘Exquisite … you've never read a novel about marriage quite like this one’ TANIA JAMES, author of Loot

AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ‘One of those rare books that once you’ve finished, comes with you for life’ RACHEL JOYCE‘A moving book … I was enraptured by it’ PHILIPPA PERRY‘Readers, you will shed tears and talk long into the night about this book’ ANDREW SEAN GREER‘A heartbreaking novel that actually made me happy’ MEG WOLITZER An extraordinarily beautiful and life-affirming new novel from one of America's greatest chroniclers of the human heart, Ann Packer. Eliot and his wife Claire have been happily married for nearly four decades. They’ve raised two children in their sleepy Connecticut town and have weathered the inevitable ups and downs that come with a long marriage. Now, eight years into Claire’s cancer diagnosis it’s time to gather their loved ones and prepare for what comes next.Through Claire’s illness, Eliot has willingly and lovingly shifted into the role of caregiver, coming to appreciate the new intimacy this creates. But as he focuses on settling into what will be their last weeks together, Claire makes an unexpected request that leaves him reeling.Ann Packer makes a triumphant return with this beautifully powerful and life-affirming novel. Some Bright Nowhere explores the profound gifts and costs of truly loving someone, and the unexpected feelings we experience as the end of life draws near. ‘As devastating as it is life-affirming’ iPAPER ‘This beautifully written story is going to get you thinking about some things that really matter’ OPRAH WINFREY‘Intimate and devastating;I felt winded, while reading, and unable to look away’ CLAIRE DAVERLEY, author of Talking at Night‘Extraordinary. Books like this are why I love reading’ ELIN HILDERBRAND, author of The Perfect Couple‘I read it in awe and haven't stopped thinking about it since’ CLAIRE POWELL, author of At the Table ‘A moving meditation on love's many forms’ PEOPLE ‘Packer’s gorgeous, deeply involving novel is a suspenseful and radiant reckoning with love, sorrow, and the everlasting mystery of death’BOOKLIST ‘One of those rare books that leaves you feeling altered somehow, like the light has shifted’ HUMA QURESHI, author of Playing Games‘Prose beautiful enough to get you drunk … A triumph’ RUFI THORPE, author of Margo's Got Money Troubles‘I read it feverishly; I lived and mourned with its characters’ AYŞEGÜL SAVAŞ, author of The Anthropologists‘Exquisite … you've never read a novel about marriage quite like this one’ TANIA JAMES, author of Loot

AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK'One of those rare books that once you've finished, comes with you for life' RACHEL JOYCE'A moving book ... I was enraptured by it' PHILIPPA PERRY'Readers, you will shed tears and talk long into the night about this book' ANDREW SEAN GREER'A heartbreaking novel that actually made me happy' MEG WOLITZERAn extraordinarily beautiful and life-affirming new novel from one of America's greatest chroniclers of the human heart, Ann Packer.Eliot and his wife Claire have been happily married for nearly four decades. They've raised two children in their sleepy Connecticut town and have weathered the inevitable ups and downs that come with a long marriage. Now, eight years into Claire's cancer diagnosis it's time to gather their loved ones and prepare for what comes next.Through Claire's illness, Eliot has willingly and lovingly shifted into the role of caregiver, coming to appreciate the new intimacy this creates. But as he focuses on settling into what will be their last weeks together, Claire makes an unexpected request that leaves him reeling.Ann Packer makes a triumphant return with this beautifully powerful and life-affirming novel. Some Bright Nowhere explores the profound gifts and costs of truly loving someone, and the unexpected feelings we experience as the end of life draws near.'As devastating as it is life-affirming' iPAPER'This beautifully written story is going to get you thinking about some things that really matter' OPRAH WINFREY'Intimate and devastating;I felt winded, while reading, and unable to look away' CLAIRE DAVERLEY, author of Talking at Night'Extraordinary. Books like this are why I love reading' ELIN HILDERBRAND, author of The Perfect Couple'I read it in awe and haven't stopped thinking about it since' CLAIRE POWELL, author of At the Table'A moving meditation on love's many forms' PEOPLE'Packer's gorgeous, deeply involving novel is a suspenseful and radiant reckoning with love, sorrow, and the everlasting mystery of death'BOOKLIST'One of those rare books that leaves you feeling altered somehow, like the light has shifted' HUMA QURESHI, author of Playing Games'Prose beautiful enough to get you drunk ... A triumph' RUFI THORPE, author of Margo's Got Money Troubles'I read it feverishly; I lived and mourned with its characters' AYSEGUL SAVAS, author of The Anthropologists'Exquisite ... you've never read a novel about marriage quite like this one' TANIA JAMES, author of Loot

AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ‘One of those rare books that once you’ve finished, comes with you for life’ RACHEL JOYCE‘A moving book … I was enraptured by it’ PHILIPPA PERRY‘Readers, you will shed tears and talk long into the night about this book’ ANDREW SEAN GREER‘A heartbreaking novel that actually made me happy’ MEG WOLITZER An extraordinarily beautiful and life-affirming new novel from one of America's greatest chroniclers of the human heart, Ann Packer. Eliot and his wife Claire have been happily married for nearly four decades. They’ve raised two children in their sleepy Connecticut town and have weathered the inevitable ups and downs that come with a long marriage. Now, eight years into Claire’s cancer diagnosis it’s time to gather their loved ones and prepare for what comes next.Through Claire’s illness, Eliot has willingly and lovingly shifted into the role of caregiver, coming to appreciate the new intimacy this creates. But as he focuses on settling into what will be their last weeks together, Claire makes an unexpected request that leaves him reeling.Ann Packer makes a triumphant return with this beautifully powerful and life-affirming novel. Some Bright Nowhere explores the profound gifts and costs of truly loving someone, and the unexpected feelings we experience as the end of life draws near. ‘As devastating as it is life-affirming’ iPAPER ‘This beautifully written story is going to get you thinking about some things that really matter’ OPRAH WINFREY‘Intimate and devastating;I felt winded, while reading, and unable to look away’ CLAIRE DAVERLEY, author of Talking at Night‘Extraordinary. Books like this are why I love reading’ ELIN HILDERBRAND, author of The Perfect Couple‘I read it in awe and haven't stopped thinking about it since’ CLAIRE POWELL, author of At the Table ‘A moving meditation on love's many forms’ PEOPLE ‘Packer’s gorgeous, deeply involving novel is a suspenseful and radiant reckoning with love, sorrow, and the everlasting mystery of death’BOOKLIST ‘One of those rare books that leaves you feeling altered somehow, like the light has shifted’ HUMA QURESHI, author of Playing Games‘Prose beautiful enough to get you drunk … A triumph’ RUFI THORPE, author of Margo's Got Money Troubles‘I read it feverishly; I lived and mourned with its characters’ AYŞEGÜL SAVAŞ, author of The Anthropologists‘Exquisite … you've never read a novel about marriage quite like this one’ TANIA JAMES, author of Loot

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.From the Trade Paperback edition.

With humor, wisdom and tenderness, Ann Packer offers ten short stories about women and men--wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, friends, and lovers--who discover that life''s greatest surprises may be found in that which is most familiar.In the title story, on the anniversary of their father''s suicide a young woman discovers that her brother may have found a "reason for living" in the love of a good woman.  In "Nerves," a young man realizes that the wife he is separated from no longer loves him but that it is his own life he misses, not her.  The narrator of "My Mother''s Yellow Dress" is a gay man remembering his deceased mother and their vital and troubling intimacy.  In "Babies"--which was included in the prestigious O. Henry anthology series --a single woman in her mid-thirties finds that everyone, including her best friend at work, is pregnant, and that their joy can only be observed, not shared.  In these and six other stories, Ann Packer exhibits an unerring eye for the small ways in which people reveal themselves and for the moments in which lives may be transformed.From the Trade Paperback edition.

From Ann Packer, author of the New York Times best-selling novels The Dive from Clausen’s Pier and Songs Without Words, a collection of burnished, emotionally searing stories, framed by two unforgettable linked narratives that express the transformation of a single family over the course of a lifetime.A wife struggles to make sense of her husband’s sudden disappearance. A mother mourns her teenage son through the music collection he left behind. A woman shepherds her estranged parents through her brother’s wedding and reflects on the year her family collapsed. A young man comes to grips with the joy—and vulnerability—of fatherhood. And, in the masterly opening novella, two teenagers from very different families forge a sustaining friendship, only to discover the disruptive and unsettling power of sex.Ann Packer is one of our most talented archivists of family life, with its hidden crevasses and unforeseeable perils, and in these stories she explores the moral predicaments that define our social and emotional lives, the frailty of ordinary grace, and the ways in which we are shattered and remade by loss. With Swim Back to Me, she delivers shimmering psychological precision, unfailing intelligence, and page-turning drama: her most enticing work yet.From the Hardcover edition.

Liz and Sarabeth have been friends forever, childhood neighbours bound together in adolescence by a devastating event, 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 depressions and her volatile love affairs - their relationship has remained a source of continuity and strength, a fixed point amid the tumult of their adult lives. But when an unforeseen calamity strikes at the heart of Liz's family, all the assumptions - the deepest habits of their friendship - are revealed in a strange new light, and Liz and Sarabeth must question everything they thought they knew about each other and themselves. Ann Packer's new novel expertly explores the inequities between close friends, the unspoken roles, hidden expectations and deep resentments that can be violently exposed by a true crisis, and the endurance and limits of bonds forged in childhood.

Carrie Bell was born and raised in Wisconsin. She's had the same best friend, the same good relationship with her mother, the same boyfriend for as long as anyone can remember. She is already quietly bored with Mike when he is horrifically injured in a diving accident at Clausen's Reservoir. Now the future that Carrie was only beginning to rebel against looks set in stone. Everyone thinks they know what Carrie will - and ought to - do. But Carrie is caught in a maze of moral dilemmas and is forced to question everything she thought she knew about herself. It is a moment of terrifying confusion, but also of mesmerising possibility.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection   Virginia, a copywriter at an ad agency, looks around her office one day and realizes that everyone—well, nearly everyone—is pregnant.  Can she be happy for them?  “Babies,” included in the prestigious O. Henry anthology series in 1992, is a sharply funny and perfectly observed story of pregnancy, city living, the semantic contradiction of “creative directors,” and finding one’s place in the world. A selection from Ann Packer’s luminous first collection Mendocino and Other Stories.  An eBook short.

How much do we owe the people we love? Is it a sign of strength or weakness to walk away from someone in need? These questions lie at the heart of Ann Packer’s intimate and emotionally thrilling new novel, which has won its author comparisons with Jane Hamilton and Sue Miller. At the age of twenty-three Carrie Bell has spent her entire life in Wisconsin, with the same best friend and the same dependable, easygoing, high school sweetheart. Now to her dismay she has begun to find this life suffocating and is considering leaving it–and Mike–behind. But when Mike is paralyzed in a diving accident, leaving seems unforgivable and yet more necessary than ever. The Dive from Clausen’s Pier animates this dilemma–and Carrie’s startling response to it–with the narrative assurance, exacting realism, and moral complexity we expect from the very best fiction.From the Trade Paperback edition.

From New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Ann Packer, a “tour de force family drama” (Elle) that explores the secrets and desires, the remnant wounds and saving graces of one California family, over the course of five decades.Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. Struck by a vision of his future family, Bill buys the property and proposes to Penny Greenway, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life appeals to him. In less than a decade they have four children. Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, overwhelmed and undersatisfied, chafing at the conventions confining her. Years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence sets off a struggle over the family’s future. One by one, they tell their stories, which reveal Packer’s “great compassion for her characters, with their ancient injuries, their blundering desires. The way she tangles their perspectives perfectly, painfully captures the tumult of selves within a family” (MORE Magazine). Reviewers have praised Ann Packer’s “brilliant ear for character” (The New York Times Book Review) and her “naturalist’s vigilance for detail, so that her characters seem observed rather than invented” (The New Yorker). Her talents are on dazzling display in The Children’s Crusade, “an absorbing novel that celebrates family even as it catalogs its damages” (People, Book of the Week). This is a “superb storyteller” (San Francisco Chronicle), Ann Packer’s most deeply affecting book yet, “tragic and utterly engrossing” (O, The Oprah Magazine).