Packer explores the poetry of suffering and redemption | Songs Without Words (Vintage Contemporaries)

book: Songs Without Words (Vintage Contemporaries) | Ann Packer

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	• Songs Without Words (Vintage Contemporaries) Ann Packer Vintage, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 52 reviews view larger image
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Songs played on the black notes of life.

"God, it was the most ordinary things that caused the greatest misery."

In Ann Packer's compelling second novel, Songs Without Words, Liz and Sarabeth are lifelong friends now in their 40s. Both live in the Bay Area, Liz with her husband, Brody, and Sarabeth single in Berkeley. Liz and Brody have two children, Lauren and Joe. Despite a family life that looks like suburban bliss on the surface, 16-year-old Lauren suffers from teenage angst, self-doubt, and depression. Her parents are too busy to notice. Liz is a bit like Mrs. Dalloway, a stay-at-home mom living her life on autopilot, preoccupied with crafts, yoga and cooking. (If not Mrs. Dalloway, then think Martha Stewart.) It soon becomes evident that Packer is playing songs on the black notes of life here when Lauren attempts suicide, an event that tests the dynamics between Liz and Sarabeth to their breaking points.

Lauren's suicide attempt derails the relationship between Liz and Sarabeth--and this becomes the most engaging plot twist in the novel. Liz is unexpectedly forced out of her comfort zone, and now feels threatened by Sarabeth's bohemian eccentricities. She doesn't need another child in her life. After Sarabeth's own mother committed suicide during her junior year in high school in 1976, she lived with Liz's family in Palo Alto. Clearly, she has unresolved mother issues, and seems to rely on Liz as her primary source of emotional support. Like Lauren, she encounters difficulties in navigating through her day-to-day life. She has struggled in her relationships with men, sabotages her own chances at happiness, and never seems at easy with her life in Berkeley--a revealing stroke showing that our childhoods follow us into adulthood. Packer taps into hard truths about suffering here, and by the end of the novel Lauren's suicide attempt becomes the catalyst to transform the relationship between Liz and Sarabeth in unexpected ways.

Several early Amazon reviewers have simply dismissed this book as "boring." With all respect to them, I think this says more about the reviewer's expectations than the actual book. It kept me so engaged I couldn't put it down. Boring? I say read the novel and decide for yourself.

G. Merritt

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Packer explores the poetry of suffering and redemption

No this is not boring or depressing, it is brilliant and beautiful insight. Dinner of all sugar and no salt is dreadful, life has bitter flavors as well as sweet. How could we experience true happiness without first knowing pain?
If Packer does a good job of showing us the intricate ways of suffering and misunderstanding, she does an even better job of showing us the ways in which we can achieve victory over them. Thank you Lisa and Sarabeth for sharing your lives with me, even if you are only characters.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, page 10, 11