A Q&A with Novelist Ann Packer
The novelist Ann Packer is really good at tricky relationships. In her bestselling debut novel The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, she tells the story of a young woman torn between her family and ex in Wisconsin and the glittering promise of New York City. Her latest book, The Children’s Crusade, out this week, takes place in present-day Silicon Valley of Internet billionaires and precocious children, where four siblings struggle with what to do with the home they were raised it. The to older siblings, Rebecca and Ryan are doctors, like their beloved late father. Ryan, the peacemaking middle child, is a teacher, and James, the youngest who never quite fit in, shows up from Oregon with his life in a mess. They’re almost like orphans, with a dead father and an artist mother, Penny, who seemed to quit being a mother and wife decades earlier. Yahoo Style spoke to Packer from her home in California about dysfunctional families, abandoning a novel, and whether she reads reviews.
Yahoo Style: What was your connection to Silicon Valley?
Ann Packer: I grew up in Palo Alto, and my parents were Stanford professors. I went to Palo Alto schools.
YS: I grew up not far from there. Did you go to Palo Alto High School?
AP: No Gunn, where all the kids are committing suicide. Something like 10 kids over the last few years. They all throw themselves on the train tracks. The culture here now with pressure on kids is unbelievable.
YS: Did that factor into your writing?
AP: I was interested in terms of the contrast with the characters having to think about what they’re going to do with the house. One of the things they come up against is knowing that they way they live versus whoever buys it. Portola Valley is teardown city and huge, hulking mansions are going up over modest ranch houses.
YS: Were the Blairs similar to your own family?
AP: Not really. The Blair family is very much from my imagination—all my characters are. A lot of my previous work was drawing on so and so or parallels to my experiences.
YS: How do you account for that change? Did you run out of your own stories or was it about getting to a place as a novelist where you can comfortably stray from yourself?
AP: I think it’s a combination of those two things. I also think we have our obsessions. I would imagine that in the future I will again have characters whose psyches or situations resemble my own or those of people I’ve known. I’m not saying there are no aspects of myself in the characters, but for the family dynamic there’s no resemblance.
YS: How did the idea come about then?
AP: I came at it from an idea I had earlier for a book that revolves around a man coming home in trouble and needing help from his sister. The very origins lie in the relationship between James and Rebecca. There was something about that dynamic from this earlier abandoned material.
YS: Is that common for you? Abandoning a novel?
AP: It’s very hard. You don’t want to waste anything. I cut stuff as I’m working all the time. I had written 50 pages.
YS: Would you call the family dysfunctional?
AP: I’m not crazy about labels. They behave dysfunctionally. Growing up they had a challenging situation with a mother who was absent and a troubled marriage is always going to affect the children. The book is about that dynamic.
YS: Are you aware of the conversation around unlikable female protagonists? You seem unafraid of challenging female characters.
AP: What I strive for is to make characters complex and real. It comes up between writers and editors: Can this character be more likable? But that implies there’s an objective quality called “likable” and ignores the fact that I like so and so and you don’t like so and so. Likability is not a single thing. I think it’s an idea that if a reader can identify with characters they’ll be more invested in the book. Some readers may identify with characters who they would like to be or be friends with or aspects represent aspects of life that they strive toward.
YS: I wonder what it says about me that I am always drawn toward unlikable characters.
AP: I tend to be the kind of person, too. If you look at the reviews on a site like Goodreads, there’s a real split between people who get immersed in fiction that represents human interaction in all its complexity and drawn to stories where people struggle with real problems. Some really hate that and it’s depressing and that’s fine. It shows what a deep division there is in what people look for in fiction. Did you see Rabbit Hole with Nicole Kidman? I love that movie. I went with a friend who said, “That was so depressing, I wish I had never seen it.” I thought, what a nuanced portrait of grief. I loved it.
YS: You mentioned Goodreads. Do you read your reviews on sites like that?
AP: No. I’ll glance to see what my average star thing is but I’m not super caught up. I actually am not super concerned with what any one person has to say including a reviewer. For me what matters is whether or not it affects the book’s pathway into the world. It’s lovely to get a very positive review. That widens your potential audience. To get a nasty review in a prominent publication, it’s unpleasant. It’s a lost opportunity to build interest in the book.
More from Yahoo Style:
Novelist Una LaMarche on Being Hairy, Lena Dunham and ‘90s Nostalgia
Writer Megan Daum and Others on the Joys of a No Kids Life
