Songs Without Words
“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
“The extraordinary authority of Packer’s voice lies in her refusal to make heroes of the victims of mischance or villains out of the friends, lovers and family members who sometimes fail them.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Subtle and complex...a compelling family drama about friendship, the past, guilt and unconscious patterns set in childhood. What’s most impressive about Songs is Packer’s ability to set a story in the wealthy and beautiful suburbs of San Francisco and make her characters’ suffering authentic....Packer makes us understand why life is simply harder for some people.”
—USA Today
“Packer writes about adult female friendship with a nuanced understanding of its emotional intensity.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“She writes easily, like walking or breathing, pinpointing emotional truths without drawing attention to her skill. You are rarely aware of her, even as you become intimate with her characters. Even as those characters feel things they, and you, have never been able to articulate....Packer has an unnerving ability to gaze steadily at feelings you can barely acknowledge even to yourself: self-pity in the midst of catastrophe...the sensual power of a mother’s love for her son. She interprets the subtle moves of Liz and Brody’s marriage with breathtaking clarity....These are secret universals, things widely felt but never mentioned....You are grateful for Packer’s insight, refreshed and comforted by the depth of her empathy.”
—Newsday
“It’s easy to find elements of one’s own experiences in Packer’s wise prose, which proves her an expert observer of the give-and-take that characterizes any deep friendship.”
—Washington Post
“As in The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, Packer makes the ripples from one act so involving, you can’t pull away.”
—Good Housekeeping
“Readers will be pleased to find Packer’s remarkable talent for characterization in the pages of her second novel.... Commonplace events and everyday gestures reveal not only sorrow, but the complex, interior lives of characters....[The teenager] Lauren’s sections are pitch-perfect....It is Lauren who gives this novel its enormous heart.”
—Charlotte Observer
The Dive from Clausen’s Pier
For the complete text of reviews that appeared in The New York Times and elsewhere, visit the links at the bottom of this section.
“A graceful writer....A quietly provocative novel....This debut...has a kind of control and austerity uncommon in a first novel.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Engrossing....Packer [has] a naturalist’s vigilance for detail, so that her characters seem observed rather than invented....The result is genuine suspense.”
—The New Yorker
“Remarkably assured, utterly winning...Packer’s characters scramble up from these pages as terrifically physical beings, so well does she describe them.”
—The Miami Herald
“Both a colorful chronicle of life in Wisconsin and New York City...and a serious, moving meditation on the nature of love and loyalty.”
—Glamour
The New York Times Book Review
The Washington Post Book World
Mendocino and Other Stories
“Precisely observed....Packer has a knack for rendering with economy and eloquence those rare interludes of grace that come upon her characters unannounced.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Well crafted....Packer’s real strength is her slightly skewed vision and sharp eye for detail that reveal the cracks and fissures in the most ordinary of lives, loves and losses.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“Her writing is graceful and effortless, yet as controlled and purposeful as a nest-building bird.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Instantly captivating....[Packer]finds a compassionate balance between her characters’ folly and fortitude.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Consistently engaging....Packer [has an] uncanny ability to hold back until the perfect moment and then reveal the deepest heart of her characters.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review