Can you believe I am still dizzy from my flight? It felt like I rode The Batman ride at Six Flags one time too many. It usually takes me a week to recover from it. Please contact me with the name of the book, name and address to ship the item to.

Winner 53: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett = gautami tripathy
Winner 54: The Killing Hour by Lisa Gardner = Christy H.
Winner 55: Songs Without Words by Ann Packer = Lynda
Winner 56: Out Of The Blue by Jill Shalvis = Judith Hulley
Winner 57: The Third Heiress by Brenda Joyce = Amy

 

Songs Without Words
by Ann Packer
Advance Reader’s Edition
Published in 2007

I got this copy last summer from Elle magazine’s reader review thing. Read an except here.

From the cover:

Ann Packer’s debut novel The Dive from Clausen’s 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 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.

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.

Don’t forget to check out my BAFAB post. Drawing is on July 3.