Ann Packer, "Some Bright Nowhere" (Harper Books, 2026)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ann Packer on "Some Bright Nowhere"

Podcast: New Books Network (Burned by Books)
Host: Chris Holmes
Guest: Ann Packer
Date: March 6, 2026
Book: Some Bright Nowhere (Harper Books, 2026)

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Episode Overview

This episode features acclaimed novelist Ann Packer discussing her latest work, Some Bright Nowhere, with host Chris Holmes. The conversation explores the novel's penetrating examination of marriage, mortality, caregiving, and the limits of intimacy through the story of Claire and Eliot—a couple confronting the end of Claire’s life. Packer and Holmes delve into the unique narrative choices, emotional stakes, and literary inspirations behind the book, while reflecting on American attitudes toward death and the meaning of loyalty, friendship, and transformation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Premise and Its Emotional Weight

• [00:31-04:33] Chris Holmes introduces Some Bright Nowhere as a novel that “asks us to sit with questions we’d rather avoid," focusing on a wife (Claire) who, facing death, asks her friends—not her husband (Eliot)—to care for her during her final weeks.
• Holmes admits he found the central conceit of the novel almost "too painful" as a reader and asks how Packer grappled with concerns that the emotional terrain might be overwhelming for some.
• Ann Packer: “I didn't grapple with that at all. I wanted to do it and so I did it…Unfortunately, that's what I'm drawn to write and so I don't have much choice.” [04:02]

Literary Inspiration and the Seeds of the Story

• [05:30-07:03] Packer explains the idea was inspired, though not based on, a story she heard decades ago about a dying woman cared for by her friends instead of her husband. She was attracted by the scenario’s emotional complexity, particularly the husband’s perspective.
• Initially, Packer experimented with multiple points of view, but the story came alive only when she devoted it solely to Eliot’s interior experience: “I just ran out of steam…It wasn’t until I thought, maybe the whole thing is his point of view, that I was able to really immerse myself and write very quickly and intensely.” [06:21]

Formal Decisions: Point of View, Duration, and Narrative “Knife”

• [07:03-10:25] Holmes calls the decision to focus on Eliot’s experience “audacious and brilliant,” making readers feel the same exclusion as Eliot does, amplifying emotional engagement.
• Packer ties the novel’s brevity to the hospice timeline: "Hospice means they're six months or less. So you've got a ticking clock." [08:28]
• She describes her approach as intuitive: “I want it to be like a knife…short and pointed…not so much sharp as short and pointed. I guess it's a paring knife.” [09:05]
• The novel is structured through tight, scene-based progression, conveying urgency and emotional impact in the final stretch of Claire’s life.

Male Space and the Dinner Club

• [11:31-14:49] The idea for Eliot’s supper club arose from her husband’s feedback that Eliot would need a “male space.” Instead of the gym, Packer gave him a men’s dinner club, born from a cooking class.
• The supper club scenes explore Eliot’s self-consciousness and highlight his preoccupation with how others perceive him after being displaced from Claire’s care.

Introspection, Blind Spots, and Perceptions

• [14:49-15:55] Holmes notes scenes where Eliot is confronted by others’ perceptions—during conversations with former colleagues and his son—questioning how much self-awareness Eliot has.
• Packer reflects: “I think he actually has a fair amount for a man…He also has blind spots.”
• She emphasizes that such confrontations are colored by the “wounded” state Eliot is already in, observing, “One of the lovely things that humans sometimes do is when they sense a wound, want to add to it.” [16:38]

Obligations at the End of Life

• [19:40-22:47] Holmes raises the novel’s reversal of typical caregiver obligations—what does a partner owe the person who survives them?
• Packer: Claire’s request is “not something…carried around for years,” but spontaneous and difficult. She frames it as Claire sharing her true desires, leaving it to Eliot to respond: “Eliot believes there's power in a dying wish and discovers himself to be somewhat unique in that view.” [21:24]
• Packer resists moralizing: “I don't come at it with a sense of right or wrong. I really come at it as a sense of what and how and why.” [22:14]

Female Friendship, Curiosity, and Limits of Knowledge

• [22:47-25:54] Holmes notes the importance of female friendship and the tension between intimacy with friends and what a partner deserves to know.
• Packer examines “the disruptive power of curiosity…what it does to both the curious person and the person about whom the curiosity is so pressingly present.” [23:40]
• Eliot’s attempts to understand Claire’s friendships remain incomplete; “he doesn't really get a definitive answer. He just understands that there is something and that something is important…” [24:52]

Facing Death Head-On: American Culture and Denial

• [27:04-28:42] Holmes and Packer discuss how the novel counters American denial of death and cultural narratives about “bucket lists.”
• Packer: “Once you are this close [to death], there's sort of no real possibility of denial…There's nothing to do but face it head on. There's sort of no way to get around it.” [27:55]
• She reiterates her interest in “stories that get very, very close to the bone of intense feeling.” [27:57]

Reader Identification and Authorial Intent

• [28:42-32:01] Holmes praises how the novel allows differing reader reactions to Claire and Eliot’s choices, appreciating that it doesn’t ask readers to “come around" to any one side.
• Packer: “I don't care at all if readers like or dislike or admire or revile my characters…I want in particular point of view, character, a main character to start in one place and end up in another, and for the reader to fully believe the transformation…I do like to make people cry.” [30:15, 31:39]

The Role and Impact of Blurbs

• [32:01-34:06] Holmes and Packer discuss the value of blurbs from admired writers (notably Rufi Thorpe, Andrew Sean Greer, Asako Serizawa, and Tania James).
• Packer calls it “absolutely wonderful” and an "honor" to have a beloved colleague admire her own work. [32:35]

Ann Packer’s Recent Reading Recommendations

• [34:16-36:28]
  • Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt: “Amazing, amazing book.” [34:47]
  • The Spare Room by Helen Garner: “It’s about a woman who has a friend who’s dying and brings her to stay with her. It’s terrific…has more edge and toughness than you might imagine.” [35:32]
  • Everything/Nothing/Someone by Alice Carrière: “A stunner of a book…A powerful accounting of a really, really difficult childhood and youth.” [35:55]
• Holmes laments rumors that publisher interest in memoir is waning, but Packer observes, “It feels right now like a very full bookshelf…” [36:51]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Packer on following her literary instincts:
  “I wanted to do it and so I did it…Unfortunately, that's what I'm drawn to write.” [04:10]
• On the novel’s brevity and structure:
  “I want it to be like a knife. …It needed to be short and pointed. The blade is not so much sharp as short and pointed. I guess it’s a paring knife.” [09:05]
• On the obligations of marriage and dying wishes:
  “Eliot believes there's power in a dying wish and discovers himself to be somewhat unique in that view.” [21:24]
• On the book’s lack of moralizing:
  “I don't come at it with a sense of right or wrong. I really come at it as a sense of what and how and why.” [22:14]
• On emotional impact over reader persuasion:
  “I don't care at all if readers like or dislike or admire or revile my characters… I do like to make people cry.” [30:15, 31:39]
• On American denial of death:
  “Once you are this close, there's sort of no real possibility of denial… There's nothing to do but face it head on.” [27:55]

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Notable Timestamps

• 00:31 — Introduction to Some Bright Nowhere and Ann Packer’s accomplishments
• 04:02 — Packer on not shying away from emotionally difficult material
• 05:30 — Origin of the novel’s central scenario
• 07:03 — Focusing on Eliot’s perspective
• 08:28 — Tying narrative duration to the hospice experience
• 11:31 — Development of the men's dinner club scenes
• 14:49 — On Eliot’s introspection and the wounds of perception
• 19:40 — Discussing obligations and honest desires at end of life
• 22:47 — Female friendship vs. spousal knowledge
• 27:04 — Tackling cultural avoidance of death
• 28:42 — On allowing readers room for discomfort or disagreement with characters
• 32:35 — The impact and meaning of literary blurbs
• 34:16 — Packer's recent recommended books

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Conclusion

Ann Packer’s conversation with Chris Holmes gives listeners an intimate understanding of the genesis, structure, and deeper questions animating Some Bright Nowhere. The discussion highlights the courage required to write—and read—about emotional extremity and the failures of easy resolution in the face of death. Through her nuanced, unsentimental approach, Packer crafts a novel that resists simple closure, foregrounds the limitations of understanding in relationships, and honors the complexity of love, loyalty, and final wishes. The episode is essential for readers interested in finely-wrought literary fiction, explorations of mortality, and the ever-shifting boundaries of intimacy.

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Further Reading (Ann Packer’s Recommendations):

• Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt
• The Spare Room by Helen Garner
• Everything/Nothing/Someone by Alice Carrière

For more episodes and links, visit burnedbybooks.com.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Chris Holmes, and this is Burned by Books. Here you'll find interviews with writers you already love, like Jennifer Egan and Rebecca Mackay, mixed in with up and coming voices like Alexandra Kleeman and Roman Alam. You'll find us wherever you listen to podcasts, but check out previous [e-mail] and on Instagram and Twitter earnedbybooks. Let's start the show when we talk about literary fiction that turns the lens inward, that observes the quiet forces of love, devotion, loneliness, and obligation, few novels arrive with the force of Some bright Nowhere, Ann Packer's most recent novel, published in November 2025 and selected for Oprah's Book Club. It's a work that asks us to sit with questions we'd rather avoid, questions that we spend our life running from. At its heart is a long married couple, Claire and Eliot, partners for nearly 40 years, whose life together has weathered ordinary joys and ordinary sorrows. But when Claire's long struggle with cancer reaches its final stage, the story shifts from what has been to what remains. Instead of seeking comfort in the familiar, the arms and care of her husband, Claire makes a startling request. She wants her closest friends, not Eliot, to tend her in her last weeks. It is a choice that fractures bonds and promises, deepens the emotional cost of her passing, and exposes the full complexity of love at the extremis of our fragile mortality. In a voice at once compassionate and unflinching, Ann Packer places us inside Eliot's interiority, where we live with his confusion, grief, devotion, and slow reckoning with loss. But the novel never, never turns away from the uncomfortable truths at the margins of caregiving and intimacy by relying on the quotidian details of what the poet Marie Howe famously called what the living do. Rather than looking toward one single emotional epiphany, Some Bright Nowhere becomes a meditation on the textures of loyalty, love, partnership, grief, and all that comes afterwards. Ann Packer is the author of five previous works of fiction, including the best selling novels the Children's Crusade and the Dive from Clausen's Pier, which received the Kate Chopin Literary Award, among many other prizes and honors. Her short fiction has appeared in the New Yorker and in the O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies, and her novels have been published around the world. A Bay Area native, she currently spends most of her time in New York and Maine. Welcome to Burned by Books. Ann Packer.

[B]

Thank you so much. And what a lovely summary of the novel.

[A]

I'm going to just say that I while I'm not unfamiliar with narratives of profound loss, there was something about this conceit, a dying partner who no longer wishes to be cared for by her husband, that almost felt too painful for me to read. I am, however, enormously grateful that I continued on. But I wonder how you grappled with the subject matter as something that might in fact be too much for some readers.

[B]

Interesting question. You know, I would, I would have to, I would have to say honestly that I didn't grapple with that at all.

[A]

That's a good answer, I think.

[B]

Yeah. I mean I wanted to, I wanted to do it and so I did it. I, I, it's, it's well known to writers of literary fiction that readers don't love having being taken to emotionally difficult places all the time. Unfortunately, that's what I'm drawn to write and so I don't have much choice.

[A]

Yeah, the dive from Colossians Pier is not asks some profound and difficult questions as well. So it's clear something you're, you're familiar with in your work. And I, I struggled to, as I was writing this to ask myself, well, why is this different in some way than, you know, I've read extraordinary both memoirs and nonfiction books, but also fiction about end of life and end of life relationships. But there, there was something about this shutting of, of the door that I found rather unique and, and frankly, that's what I look for in literature. And so I wonder how that came to you as the conceit for the novel. Because it doesn't. I was struggling to think of another novel that had this especially, I think, in the interesting way that you had it be the, the wife that chooses to, to close that door.

[B]

You know, it's, it's, it's not based on, but inspired by, I guess I would say a situation I heard about very much in passing long ago, maybe 20 years or so. And I didn't hear much. I heard, oh, this woman was dying, her husband was deemed inadequate to the task of, of caring for her. And so, you know, two women friends moved in and did the job and I don't know if they asked him to leave. That was purely my. My invention, my addition to the. The circumstance I'd heard about. But it. It intrigued me immediately. I thought, you know, you get it. Like women taking care of women. Yes, I get that. I understand the, the impulse for, for that kind of relationship to be the one that you spend your last time with, but I. I could never really get past the effect on the husband. And it's interesting, when I first thought about doing this, working with this material, I. I thought that I would have. I would use multiple points of view. And I actually started a draft that opened with the wife. It wasn't clear. It was a different woman and moved into the point of view of one of her friends. And I just ran out of steam after about 50 pages. I. I wasn't compelled by it. And it wasn't until I thought sometime later, wait, maybe the whole thing is his point of view that I was able to really immerse myself and write very quickly and intensely.

[A]

It is. I absolutely wanted to talk to you about what I feel like is an audacious and really kind of brilliant choice to make Elliot the primary focus point, I think, because then what you have is the reader experiencing being shut at, because we, you know, it's a limited third person, so it can, you know, it. It can drift, but really hues to. To Elliot's experience and interiority for the most part. And that formally, I think, does something magical with. With the reader's experience of. Of feeling like you're. You're left out at the. At the. Perhaps the most important time at which your presence might have meant. Meant something to someone else. So can you talk a little bit about how formally how you imagined that feeling both for Eliot but also perhaps for the reader?

[B]

Yeah, you know, I once. I once I moved past the idea of rotating among the four central characters that the two friends and the wife and the husband and decided to stay with him seemed right to me partly because I knew it had to be a very short novel and I needed.

[A]

Why do you. Why do. Did it need to be a short novel?

[B]

Hospice means they're six months or less. So you've got a ticking clock, basically. Now, not everyone dies within that period of time, but entering hospice means you're going to die soon. And for me, the. The element of time and losing time and having it run out is really central to Elliot's experience. And it felt right to me that he not. He not sort of lose sight of that. That clock and indeed, you Know, he, he on a number of different occasions is sort of filled with consternation because he doesn't know exactly how long it's going to be. Is it three to six months? Is it, you know, one to three months? It gave me, it had to be short. It's funny, when I was writing, I, I write very intuitively. I don't, I'm not at all analytical in a first draft. And I, I thought, well, this, this book is. I want it to be like a knife. And I didn't bother to sort of ask myself what I meant. I just thought it's just gotta be like a knife. And what I came to understand later was that it needed to be short and pointed. And so the, the blade is not so much sharp as short and pointed. I guess it's a paring knife. So anyway, so I, you know, I could say now in retrospect, well, it's a, it's a novel that deals with people dealing with very intense pain. So who wants to spend more than a couple hundred pages with. But that wasn't what I was thinking at the time. I wasn't, as I say, I was just sort of moving very intuitively from, you know, scene to scene. And it is a very, a very scene based for an interior novel. It's a very scene based novel as well. That sort of led to the pointed part. I wanted there to be some propulsion.

[A]

Yeah. So knife, I think, is a very appropriate term. Paring knife even. And that's a, that's a really, I think, important to know detail that you're thinking about like a kind of hospice timeline as you're thinking about the length of this, of this work. Because it does feel, it feels day to day. It doesn't like, we don't have big long stretches of loss. We're, you know, as you say, scene to scene in the final, the final days and weeks of, of life. And, and you say you, you sort of sculpted it as scenes. There are some, there's some key scenes in here that have nothing to do with, with Claire's loss and Elliot's confrontation of that loss, but feel so important to how Eliot will come to understand what is going on. And, and one of them is his, his dinner group, his supper club with, with some, some gentlemen and in his life. And I wonder if you'd talk a little bit about how you shaped that scene, especially the first dinner scene.

[B]

Yeah, well, again, with, with sort of protestations that I didn't really shape it, I just wrote it.

[A]

Yeah, no, that's I mean, that's, I, I think that's important for people to hear because I think that they perhaps imagine that there is grand, like structural plans. And I think it's nice that there are also in intuitions.

[B]

Yes, very much so. And as, as I've sometimes describe it, it's really coming out of my fingers as I type. There's not a sort of pause between the thought and the, the, the language taking shape. It's, it's all one thing. I mean, I can start a sentence and have no idea where it's going. And it just, I just keep typing. And I have a sentence in terms of the dinner club. So I, I can tell you a, a little anecdote about how that came to be.

[A]

Please.

[B]

That early, about 40 pages into the first draft, I asked my husband, who's also a writer, to let me know if, to read and tell me if he thought I was onto something. I'd been sort of flailing about for a few years and was not a happy writer. And I just needed some encouragement other than my own sort of sense of, I seem to be adding pages, so it must be okay. So my husband read the first 40 pages and said, yes, absolutely, keep going. And he said, but I do have one thought, which is that Elliot, Elliot's gonna need a male space to operate in some of the time. And it made so much sense to me. And I thought he was absolutely right. And at the same time I thought, oh, God, I'm gonna have to have him go to the gym. And I didn't want to do that, you know, without, without being planful in any way. I, I, I, I moved him out of the house and wrote sentences. And those sentences were about how he was going to be heading off to this dinner club, which grew out of a cooking class, a men's cooking class that he took and met these guys, and now they meet monthly to, to cook and talk about recipes in a very analytical way. And in terms of that scene, that first scene, they're two, two gatherings of this dinner club in, in the, in the course of the novel. And the first one, what I discovered as I, as I wrote it was how important self consciousness was going to be for him. How important it was going to be that he was not only living with the displacement, he was living with worries about other people knowing about it. When I, when I, when I wrote that bit, I definitely planted seeds for, for thematic development through the, through the novel of his sort of the, the interrelationship between his own owned thoughts about what's happening and feelings, but also his projected thoughts. Thoughts and what he imagines other people are going to be doing with this, this news of his, you know, apster, basically.

[A]

Do you, I, I, I, I also found that this scene as, as well as a scene with a, you know, a former colleague that he, that he leaves in, in such an upset state. It's an incredible scene in which he's essentially told that he is bo. Regimented and kind of, you know, much less capable than he imagined. And, and I wonder if you think of him as a character as, as really not having much self consideration and introspection until this moment I'm in which he has to deal with all of this.

[B]

I think he actually has a fair amount for, I was about to say for a man. And I'll just go ahead and say for.

[A]

No, no, say it. Yeah, no, you can just, I think you can blanket it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. He's, he, because he's been married to a woman who is, has a lot of awareness of how people operate psychologically. But he also has blind spots.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

At the same time, one thing there's, there's a scene with his son we should just. For listeners, that's similar to the scene with the former colleague in that he, he, he gets a, a kind of painful sense of, of how he's been or is being seen by others. But I, I was always mindful that one, they're not telling him the only truth. They're telling him the thing that they're thinking in the moment. And the moment is defined by this blow he's just received. So the psyche he's taking with him places is one that's already experiencing a wound. And you know, one of the, one of the lovely things that humans sometimes do is when they sense a wound, want to add to it. So I was thinking about that a lot. Not so much in the first drafts, but later looking back on those scenes, I was thinking this isn't, this isn't about establishing some, you know, definite sense of who he is as a human being, so much as establishing the way that different moments in our lives give rise to different kinds of interactions with other people. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the weight.

[A]

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[A]

that's fascinating. Yeah, so it's like both, you know, a. A revelation, but it's a revelation at a moment in which that other person is going to have other. Other motivations for sharing this thing.

[B]

Right? Exactly. Exactly.

[A]

That's. I think that's such an interesting way of. Of coming at that. One of the most pressing and difficult questions you ask in some bright nowhere is what obligations have to a partner who will live on as. As we presume, Elliot will we really only discuss publicly anyway the. The question of the caregiver's obligations and what was it like to switch that and to ask of Claire what. What are her obligations to Elliot?

[B]

You know, kept coming down for me, it kept coming down to the question of what to do with problematic feelings in a relationship. Because Claire, this isn't, this idea of having her friends with her for her death is not something that Claire's been carrying around for years, you know, saving up to the moment when it was, you know, the right time to tell Elliot what she wanted.

[A]

It's a, it's a very, feels very spontaneous.

[B]

Yeah, it's whimsical. It's spontaneous. And she, she starts to tell him about it and then she doesn't. And then she waits a day and then she does tell him and she's struggling and I think I, I saw her as, yes, asking something very difficult of him, but also giving him the opportunity to know her true feelings in the moment and to not pretend that she hasn't had this idea. And in the end, it's not so much that she says, will you do this for me? She says, this is what I'm dreaming of. And now it's up to you what to do with that knowledge. And Elliot believes there's power in a dying wish and discovers himself to be somewhat unique in that view. But for him, it's part of being a responsive spouse is to respond to that last wish. I mean, you know, that, that sets up all, all kinds of chaos for him, but he, he, he does do it. I hear, I hear that you're asking sort of more broadly about whether or not someone at the end of their life should be truthful.

[A]

Yeah. And I wonder if writing this, you know, gave you a different perspective than you might have had at the beginning.

[B]

I don't think, you know, it's funny, I don't think I have a. I don't think I have a sense of. I don't come at it with a sense of right or wrong. I really come at it as a sense of what and how and why. So I, I see characters and people as, you know, driven by powerful forces that can be understood or can be attempted to be understood rather than making good or bad choices.

[A]

That's fascinating. So Claire, obviously, you know, she dreams of and looks to her friends in her waning days to be company, to be caregivers, to be support. They're referred to at one point as the three witches. They exist on, for the most part, on the outside of our third person limited narrative for most of the novel. And you clearly want to consider the importance of that kind of female friendship and companionship as something different from coupling up. But you also ask the question of what a partner deserves to know about that world of friendship and sometimes private friendships. And I Wonder if there's some tension between those two things for you in. In this novel.

[B]

I think I'm. I'm always interested in the sort of disruptive power of curiosity in any relationship and what it. What curiosity does to both the.

[A]

The.

[B]

The curious person and the. The person about whom the curiosity is so pressingly present. So I think. I think in the book, I. I wanted to. I wanted Eliot to be at a moment where something that he thought he really understood or understood as well as he cared to or needed to sort of shifted for him as the end of his wife's life was drawing near. And. And he discovers, sort of, to his surprise, that he. He's. They're now sort of a. A. A subject of. They're. They're. They're fascinating to him, and he wants to know more. He. He engages in some, you know, sort of small acts of spycraft to try to. What is it about them? Why them? Why not me? I feel like I've wandered away from your question, though, and I'm not sure I'm really answering it.

[A]

No, I mean, you're in, I think, a more interesting territory that his insatiable knowledge, or desire for knowledge about why. What is it about these women? And, you know, I don't think it gives away too much to say that he doesn't really get a definitive answer. He just understands that there is something and that something is. Is important and. And wait for Claire at the end. Do you think. Do you think that's the case, or do you feel like he comes around and. And knows in some definable way.

[B]

Well, and here. Here the. The possibility of. Of a spoiler is probably at its only real. The only possibility of a spoiler is right now, so I'm going to be very careful, but I will say that I think that. That both Claire and Elliot discover that there were things going on in this request that neither them really understood at the time.

[A]

Yeah, I didn't wanna. I didn't wanna spoil, but that's. I think that's a nice dangle for. For future readers.

[B]

Not too much.

[A]

No, no, I think that's perfect. American culture is so bad at dealing with death. Mm. We have built structures of unimaginable size and importance designed solely to get us to forget our mortality or believe that it can be pushed off with a certain vitamin or cream or exercise regimen. We imagine bucket lists of extraordinary acts and experiences that will make death palatable. And this cultural amnesia is not what Claire once. And it's certainly not what the novel Imagines is a, a profound way to experience loss, grief and, and ultimately death. How did you come to think about an American death in this case that might stand outside of that? And, and where did you come down once you had finished the novel and thinking about that question of how we deal with death, particularly in our culture?

[B]

So I, I guess I, what I would say is that once you are this close, there's sort of no real possibility of denial. They are within months or possibly weeks. And the, the body, Claire's body can't go to Japan or climb a mountain or do any of these sort of crazy bucket list things that, that you hear about. You know, they're, they're very much past whatever denials they went through. And I didn't want to dwell in the past or try to explain what had come before, what their relationship was like, but we're, we're, we're in the final minutes here, and there's just no, there's nothing to do but face it head on. There's sort of no way to get around it.

[A]

There's that knife again.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And I am, I am always very interested in stories that get very, very close to the bone of intense feeling. And this. I, I, I don't, I don't think I really came away feeling anything other than that I, I had found material that really compelled me and that I had created characters who seemed to me to, to provide a good scaffolding. Let's really mangle the metaphor for the ninth skate along. I guess what I'm trying to say is I didn't think about the American denial of death.

[A]

Again. I don't want to spoil things, but one of the things I find deeply compelling about reading this novel, and I just want to flag that, you know, the, the first four of your blurbs on the back of this novel are four of the novelists that I have found myself most engrossed by and, and, and most impressed with and it, and, and I, and I love that they love this novel too. And, and one of the things that I found, like, so deeply compelling is that you don't ask. The novel does not ask me to come around to Claire's side of things, even understanding that there are some circumstances that we don't know to the very end. It is. The novel is fine with me feeling like maybe I hate Claire's choice. Maybe I hate Elliot having to go through this process, even if the process is illuminating for him. But the fact that you allow for a reader to live in this world and, and Find that there is pleasure in getting to imagine something you find unimaginable. I think is. Is perhaps the. The greatest strength of the novel. And I. And I wondered if, you know, I know you're an intuitive writer, but what is your relationship to thinking about Claire's side of things and. And whether it matters that a reader come around in some way?

[B]

So I'm always striving to find what feels real to me. I don't care at all if readers like or dislike or admire or revile my characters. So I'm never concerned about bringing them around. I'm concerned more about the characters than I am about the reader in the sense that I want in particular point of view, character, a main character to start in one place and end up in another one and for the reader to fully believe the transformation. You know, I sometimes joke that I write books about people changing their minds, but I actually think that's pretty much true. There's not a lot of. They're very interior, as you. As you said in your. In your intro. So I. I feel I. I look at my job, not that it's a job, but I look at what I'm doing as spending time alone creating a thing that works according to my. That satisfies my sense of what it should be, which is sort of tautological, but. Okay. And. And then. And then it goes out and. And people have experiences of it and it's sort of. I mean, it. It doesn't really belong to me anymore. I'm always very interested to hear what people think and very honored to think that they're thinking about it at all. But I'm not trying to. Not trying to give them a certain experience, although I do like to make people cry.

[A]

Well, you were successful with me, and I guarantee with others. I re. Before I sort of ask you about some of the, you know, the books you've been reading and loving recently, I realized I didn't even reference the. These blurbists on the back who are so important to me. But Ruf Thorpe, Andrew Sean Greer, Ask, and Tanya James, I think, are four extraordinary novelists and they. They think a lot about this book very clearly. Was it, Was it wonderful to get those blurbs?

[B]

Oh, gosh, yes. It's absolutely wonderful that. I mean, the blurb. The blurb business is. It's a lot of pressure, but it really makes a difference. I think it makes most of the difference, really inside the publishing house. I think that it really, really helps get the sales reps very interested in a book. And then of Course it makes a difference on a table, but I don't know how often buy or not buy a book based on. On a blurb versus just sort of a sense, a sense of what it's about or the author or, I don't

[A]

know, the COVID I think. So first and foremost, you know, I'm. I'm interested in, you know, what, what this book is going to ask of me in the process. But I will say that I've come to know certain authors as very honest in their appreciations in blurbs and others as just sort of, you know, scattershot. And so certain authors, when I see a blurb by them, that. That can override whether or not I'm interested or not in a book. So they are. They are important to me. But I also know that it is a. It's a publisher's game as much as anything else.

[B]

Yeah, but. But, you know, it's. It's part of how we. How we do this business, we who are involved in it in any way. And it's. It's a great honor to have a writer you admire come back and admire your book. It's. There's really nothing like it.

[A]

Yeah, I can only imagine. Well, before I let you go, and I would love to hear a little bit about maybe some books that you've been reading and loving recently.

[B]

Sure. So a novel that I had barely heard of when I picked it up, but that people then began to talk about a lot. So it, It. It had some. It developed some force sometime after it was published, I believe. I'm not sure about this. Anyway, enough preamble. It's a novel called Loved and Missed and.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Right.

[A]

This was blur. This was mentioned by two other guests. And so I went out and read it and it's so incredible.

[B]

Oh, how funny. Yes, it'. Amazing, amazing book. And I've. I've bought three or four. This is Susie Boyd. I bought, I don't know, two or three others of her books, and I'm now blanking on the title of the one I've read. But I loved it also.

[A]

Oh, I'll have to.

[B]

I'll have to check it out. It's not Love and Fame. It's might be called the Little Hours. Anyway, you'll figure it out. It's. It's very, very good. Very, very, very good. And I read a novel and this is actually. It's funny, this novel relates very closely to my book. I read it after I'd written my book and it's called the Spare Room by the Australian writer Helen Garner.

[A]

Oh, she's amazing. But I haven't read Spare Room.

[B]

Oh, well, it's about a woman who has a friend who's dying and brings her to stay with her. And it's very. It's. It's terrific. And. And it has more edge and toughness than the description might make you imagine in a good way.

[A]

I think everyone should be reading Helen Garner.

[B]

Yeah, she's fantastic. And then. Oh, I read a memoir, this is maybe a year or two ago, called Everything Nothing Someone. Is that right? Everything. Alice Carriere. Everything Nothing Someone, I think, is the title, and it's memoir about growing up the daughter of the artist Jennifer Bartlett, who. And it is a stunner of a book. It's such a. A powerful accounting of a really, really difficult childhood and. And youth.

[A]

Well, I need. I need a good memoir because someone recently depressingly told me that the memoir, as a. As something that publishers are interested in, is. Is dying after a long. A long period of. Of great interest and very die.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So I'm. I'm hoping that this will make me think that that's not true.

[B]

Yeah. That's so interesting because it. It feels right now like a very full bookshelf.

[A]

Yeah. So. So vibrant and. And interesting and developing. But. Well, maybe they were just. They were just wrong.

[B]

Let's hope we're just, like, looking way out across the ocean and seeing something, some little something on the horizon that's headed our way.

[A]

Yeah. Well, these are. These are three amazing books, but I just really want to recommend Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer. It is a book that I found daunting at first, and then I just simply adored living with Eliot in this moment of extremes of feeling and wondering about obligations to loved ones and how one understands oneself outside of those things. And as with those wonderful novelists, I know that my readers will find much to love in Some Bright nowhere. And thank you so much for coming on the show, Andrew.

[B]

Thank you so much, Chris. It was a pleasure.

[A]

Well, that's all for me for now. My thanks to Ann Packer for coming on to talk about her latest novel, Some Bright Nowhere. You can find links to purchase Some Bright Nowhere and all of Anne's recommended books at the website burnedbybooks.com. there you'll find all of our previous episodes, links to buy a podcast T shirt, and ways to get in contact. As you listen, take a moment to rate the show on itunes, Spotify, Apple, and now YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts. Until next time this has been burned by books,

[B]

Sam.