Picture a perfect summer day: You and your fianc?? get into the car for a warm, sunny drive to the beach. The sunroof is open, and you feel a warm breeze brush your cheek as you race down a Madison highway. Two hours later, your fianc?? is lying on a bed in the emergency room, unconscious and unaware that he will never walk again.
These are the events that open Ann Packer's new novel, \The Dive from Clausen's Pier."" Carrie watches her fianc??, Mike, dive excitedly into the water, never thinking he might not make it back to the surface on his own. Minutes later, she watches his limp body being pulled from the lake. Carrie gives Mike her unconditional support during the beginning of his stay at the hospital. Within weeks, however, her feelings change as she realizes her love for him is very conditional.
Carrie turns a whimsical drive into a life-altering move when she migrates from Madison to New York City. The city gives her an avenue to pursue her sewing and a new man to dive into a relationship with. After months of spontaneous living, Carrie has to choose which city she truly belongs to, and which man she truly wants to be with.
Familiar details of Madison welcome readers from the very first pages. These details are laced into Carrie's memories: Afternoons spent at James Madison Park, evenings socializing at the Union Terrace and hours spent hiking to Picnic Point. These memories place the reader right in the scene as they paint a picture in his or her mind.
Carrie faces the possibility of losing her freedom and independence. As a result, she is forced to decide which is more important to her: Mike's companionship or her freedom to live a full and adventurous life. The novel places that same question in the reader's mind.
The Daily Cardinal had the honor of speaking with Ann Packer.
The Daily Cardinal: Why and how did you decide to center your novel around such a tragic situation?
Ann Packer: I think I've always been very interested in exploring what happens when the unthinkable happens. I had a trauma in my childhood: My father had a stroke and later committed suicide. I think that set me up to have a life-long interest in how people cope with terrible things. That led me to gravitate toward certain types of subjects, like this one.
DC: How did you decide to set the novel in Madison?
AP: [Laughs] I spent two years there in the late '80s and it was there that I started thinking about the novel in very, very vague ways. After I left Madison, I spent a year in France and I started writing the novel there. Because I'd been in Madison awhile, I was beginning to think about the novel. It sort of permeated those thoughts, and I was out of the country and therefore not in a place that would have worked as a setting. I think I just naturally went back in my mind to the last American place where I'd been living.
DC: What was the reason for the shift from Madison to New York City?
AP: The character [Carrie] is exploring a number of different opposites in her life. The way I saw it, she needed to leave her home to discover what it meant to her. I chose New York because I had lived there and it was a very real setting for me. It wasn't something I had to work on a lot to invent because I had my own experience to draw on. Also, there was the contrast. I thought it would offer enough contrast to Madison and to the Midwest that it would galvanize certain changes in her.
DC: Why did you characterize Kilroy as very mysterious about his past and present life?
AP: He came to me that way and he resembles mysterious and alluring people from my past. I think there is something attractive about a person who doesn't present himself very thoroughly or who seems to have a lot of secrets. I think that I've probably always had an interest in that kind of person. It was natural for Carrie to encounter a person like that. Also, he represents another contrast: He's very different from Mike, who's wide open and very knowable and, for a while'Carrie thinks'kind of boring. Kilroy, in not being so knowable, is a challenge for her and I think that keeps her interested in him for a long time.
DC: What is the message that you want to send to your readers with this novel?
AP: I think I just wanted to tell a story. I wanted to invent it as thoroughly as I could and leave it open enough so that people could debate what it was about and what it meant. Every issue is complex and has many different sides and even one person's response to an event is complex and has many different sides. I don't feel I write to instruct.
DC: Could you talk a little bit about your past novels and any future plans you have?
AP: I published a collection of short stories in 1994. It was called ""Mendocino and Other Stories"" and it was actually the book that I worked on while I was a Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. The support I got from the institute was really crucial in writing that book. As far as the future goes, I am working on a second novel; it's quite different. It's set in the Bay Area [CA] where I live and it has a number of different point-of-view characters rather than a single first-person narrator. That's probably all I can say about it at this point.
""The Dive from Clausen's Pier"" is published by Alfred A. Knopf. Ann Packer will be appearing at the University Bookstore, 711 State St., Wed., April 24 at 6 p.m.
