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SONGS WITHOUT WORDS
By: Ann Packer
Knopf
September 2007
On Sale: September 4, 2007
352 pages
ISBN: 0375412816
EAN: 9780375412813
Hardcover
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Women's Fiction
Ann Packerβs debut novel, The Dive from Clausenβs Pier, was a nationwide best seller 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. Expertly, with the keen introspection and psychological nuance that are her hallmarks, she explores what happens when there are inequities between friends and when the hard-won balances of a long relationship are disturbed, perhaps irreparably, by a harrowing crisis.
Liz and Sarabeth were childhood neighbors in the suburbs of northern California, brought as close as sisters by the suicide of Sarabethβs mother when the girls were just sixteen. In the decades that followedβthrough Lizβs marriage and the birth of her children, through Sarabethβs attempts to make a happy life for herself despite the shadow cast by her motherβs actβtheir relationship remained a source of continuity and strength. But when Lizβs adolescent daughter enters dangerous waters that threaten to engulf the family, the fault lines in the womenβs 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 limitsβand the powerβof the friendships we create when we are young.
Once again, Ann Packer has written a novel of singular force and complexity: thoughtful, moving, and absolutely gripping, it more than confirms her prodigious literary gifts.
 Media BuzzDiane Rehm Show - NPR - September 26, 2007
Early Show - September 13, 2007
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