Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Swim Back to Me

3.25 of 5 stars 3.25 · rating details · 1,333 ratings · 287 reviews

Ann Packer is one of our most talented observers of family life, with its hidden crevasses and unforeseeable perils. In these unforgettable, emotionally searing stories, she explores the moral predicaments that define our lives, the frailty of ordinary grace, and the ways in which we are shattered and remade by loss.

Paperback, 240 pages

Published April 3rd 2012 by Vintage (first published January 1st 2011)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 2,886)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Nov 25, 2012 Andy Miller rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

One of the best collection of short stories I have read in a long time, Ann Packer is a great writer. You get to know the characters and you're in suspense as to what happens in their lives. I found myself disagreeing about the conclusion of one story, JUMP, I thought the story was harsh in the summary of Alejandro's dad, a doctor who woke up in the middle of the night to drive Alejandro's friend to his office to give a test and then prescribe an antibiotic(the fact he did it isn't outweighed by...more

3 likes · like · see review

May 08, 2011 Lisa rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I should state upfront that I'm not a fan of short stories, so I have a bias. I picked this up because I loved The Dive From Clausen's Pier and figured I'd give this a chance. It reminded me of why I don't like short stories. I get into them and then they end abruptly and many times in a way that leaves me confused. I'm always left wanting more, or in this case, frankly, wishing I hadn't read the story in the first place, because the collection is sad and depressing. The overall theme is of loss...more

3 likes · like · see review

Oct 26, 2012 Dave rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read The Dive From Clausen's Pier almost exactly 10 years ago and thought quite highly of it. A long-term relationship is heading toward an end and then a freak accident spurs more abrupt change from the protagonist who heads to NYC and lands a literary job. The plot itself was not especially inventive, but the writing and characterization were very good and I definitely recommend the novel.

Swim Back To Me, however, did not meet the standard of Packer's earlier work. The first story, Walk for...more

like · see review

May 03, 2012 Jennifer March rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

All of the stories in this collection are great, but I absolutely loved the first story in this collection, Walk for Mankind. The craft, the structure, the beautiful writing, the funny, realistic dialogue, the marvelous similes, and most of all the characters and their stories were so very engaging to me. I read it straight through in one sitting--all 95 pages. I was very impressed with Ann's ability to create a credible 13-year-old boy voice in first person. I found myself caring about Richard...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 28, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ann Packer's newest book, Swim Back to Me, is comprised of a novella and five short stories. They are all "emotionally searing stories" dealing with issues of intimacy, misunderstandings that cause distancing, betrayals, and the problems that people have with understanding and knowing one another. Each story is strong and brilliant.

`Walk for Mankind', the novella in this collection, just sings. It is a coming of age story but to just describe it as that would be like saying it's a beautiful day...more Ann Packer's newest book, Swim Back to Me, is comprised of a novella and five short stories. They are all "emotionally searing stories" dealing with issues of intimacy, misunderstandings that cause distancing, betrayals, and the problems that people have with understanding and knowing one another. Each story is strong and brilliant.

`Walk for Mankind', the novella in this collection, just sings. It is a coming of age story but to just describe it as that would be like saying it's a beautiful day and to leave out what makes it beautiful: the smell of the greenery, the feel of a breeze, the sensation of the the sun on your skin and the overall feeling of beauty and abundance inspired by being part of this world.

The novella takes place in 1972 Palo Alto, California close to the Stanford campus. It is told from fifty-year old Richard's memories of his fourteenth summer. Sasha and Richard are both fourteen years old and are friends, the kind of friends who play scrabble, go to the beach, ride bikes together and play truth and dare. They have fun. Sasha is the more dominant one in the relationship and she has a real independent and wild streak to her that Richard lacks. Sasha decides that she and Richard should do a 20-mile Walk for Mankind and raise so much money that they are `heroes' of a sort. Just before the walk, Sasha meets Cal and begins a sexual relationship with him. Since Cal is a drug dealer, pot also enters the picture. Sasha starts smoking a lot of weed and Richard soon embraces it as well. Pot becomes a big deal for Richard as he "laughs the ocean-wave laughter of the stoned, up and down and down and up, and it was incredibly intense and at the same time locked away from the real world, safe behind a wall of glass".

Richard loves to go to Sasha's house where her free-wheeling parents are fun and exuberant. Richard lives with his stodgy father, a history professor, and a housekeeper. His mother left them ten months ago to `find herself' and Richard sees her once a month for a weekend. Richard's relationship with his father is distant and he loves Sasha's family as much as being with Sasha. There comes a time in their relationship, however, when sexuality enters and they begin to distance, not understanding one another and their new roles.

The underlying theme of this beautiful novella is the distance and pursuit of two adolescents who do not know themselves or each other and are trying to navigate the world of intimacy. This quickly turns into perceived betrayals which distance the two friends, leaving them in a place of anomie. They learn to perceive the treacheries, dreams and misfortunes that comprise life, songs in a dissonant key.

In `Things Said and Done' Sasha's family is revisited during the festivities of her brother's marriage to a woman much younger than him. Her parents are long divorced and Sasha has come to realize that her father is a narcissist. She is his emotional caretaker. She has left her wildness behind her and lives a staid life as an academic.

In `Molten' a mother grieves the death of her teen-aged son. "Her body had become a scale, a device for measuring grief." She has lost her grasp on life and tries to relive her son's days by listening to his rock music non-stop and finding meaning in the music and instrumentation he once listened to. She has moved away from her family and at a bereavement group "she felt molten. She didn't want friends, compassionate or otherwise. She wanted to scream in a padded room, scratch her arms till they bled."

`Jump' is a story about a shift supervisor at a copy store who has a urinary tract infection. Her car won't start and a co-worker drives her home. On the drive she finds out he is not who she thought he was and that they are both trying to escape from certain parts of their lives without success.

In `Dwell Time', a newly married woman has to deal with her husband's habit of just disappearing for days at a time, something he did in his first marriage but she did not know about. Should she leave him or can she find a way to make this marriage work? Interestingly, `dwell time' "is how long soldiers have between deployments". Could her husband think of their marriage as a war zone, and these disappearances be his way to find peace?

`The Firstborn' is a poignant story of a woman whose firstborn son died at five months from crib death. This destroyed her marriage. She is remarried now, pregnant and about to give birth to a child. The couple's fears and hopes are examined, along with her memories of her firstborn.

I am a lover of short stories to begin with, but I gather light when I read something as engaging and brilliant as this collection. Ann Packer has matured so much in her writing since The Dive From Clausen's Pier. She is well on her way to becoming a master.
(less)

1 like · like · see review

Dec 03, 2011 Jan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Recently, after I lamented the fact that I'm having a hard time finding fiction books that aren't 400+ pages long, a friend recommended that I try a book of short stories. I've never been a big fan of short stories, for reasons that I find difficult to articulate. I think it's that a short story always feels incomplete to me - like I'm only getting a part of the story, not the whole story - and that irks me. But I thought, what the heck, I haven't tried to read a book of short stories in a long...more

1 like · like · see review

Jun 05, 2011 Allyson rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a fast read, about the best I can say for it. She did a nice job creating her characters but they were basically losers. Their lives were sad, but in the hands of a writer like Annie Proulx, Alice Munro, or even Maile Meloy, losers like these are lifted out of that stereotype and become real people, or at least people I am glad to read about. Sad stories, sad lives, but somehow still worthwhile reading.
Packer's characters were completely forgettable and lackluster. I did not care about...more

3 likes · like · see review

Apr 28, 2011 Jill rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Swim Back To Me is an amazingly assured book of short stories, bookmarked by two novellas, which deftly explores the fragility of family relationships. In many instances, it took my breath away with its perception and insights.

The entire first half of the book is dominated by one story – Walk For Mankind, set on the Stanford campus during the Watergate era. Richard is a somewhat gawky coming-of-age boy, who is shifted between his aloof history father and his do-gooder mother. In contrast to this...more Swim Back To Me is an amazingly assured book of short stories, bookmarked by two novellas, which deftly explores the fragility of family relationships. In many instances, it took my breath away with its perception and insights.

The entire first half of the book is dominated by one story – Walk For Mankind, set on the Stanford campus during the Watergate era. Richard is a somewhat gawky coming-of-age boy, who is shifted between his aloof history father and his do-gooder mother. In contrast to this fragmented family is Sasha, the red-haired and impulsive daughter of the bohemian and exhilarating Horowitz family.

With great acuity, Ann Packer explores this momentous year, the escapades into the heady world of drugs and sex, and the fissures that threaten the family and the relationship between the friends. Richard wonders, “How do people do it, pry themselves from their pasts?” Some of the answer will be revealed in the last novella, where we meet Sasha again, this time, at the midpoint of her life and in the unlikely role as caregiver to her hypochondriac and narcissistic father. She has pried herself from the past…or has she really checked out from the drama?

Other stories are equally powerful. In Molten, we meet a mother with pathological grief, whose teenage son died an unexpected hero’s death. She reflects, “It was too fierce, the pain of having children. It hurt just to love them, let alone this. It hurt to be impatient, bored, entranced. Always knowing they were on their way away.” She defies the expectation of nobility and we fear for her by the end.

Then there’s Jump, the story of distorted expectations – a thin, downcast, Latino youth is revealed to be something entirely different than he seems. And Dwell Time, one of my favorites: a portrait of a seemingly perfect blended second marriage that comes with unrealized demons that have not been shed. Laura, the protagonist, learns the hard way that “dwell time” is the time that the soldiers in us have between deployments. Firstborn, another fine story, is a tender story about a soon-to-be-father whose wife is affected by the crib death of the young son she had had with her first husband.

These stories – woven with the threads of the complexity of human behavior – will not soon cede into memory. Each is a little gem.

(less)

5 likes · like · see review

Mar 31, 2011 Eileen Granfors rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: families, local-color, women, short-stories

I loved Ann Packer's new anthology, "Swim Back to Me." I would have loved it more as a novel. Although there are connections between the stories, especially the first and the last, I enjoy the greater depth of the novel form and getting to know all of the characters deeply.

That said, each story in the anthology holds its own, with memorable characters and solid conflict. Most of the stories are set in the Bay Area of California. Packer opens with 8th graders, Sasha and Richard, children of acade...more

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 03, 2013 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

About the best I can say for most of this collection is "meh." The experience was similar to watching your typical summer comedy in a movie theater: you enjoy the show, it made you happy for a few moments, and your forget about it a couple hours later. I really liked parts of "Walk for Mankind" as I think Ms. Packer really nailed the adolescent boy chasing a girl he wants but doesn't know to get sort of trope, but I also didn't quite get the characters' motivations at times. Sure, Sasha rebellin...more

like · see review

May 16, 2012 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, short-stories, contemporary-fiction

Lovely collection of short stories. When done right, I just love this type of book. Packer’s writing is fantastic. One of my favorite descriptions: she’s “like a black note of pepper in a rich chocolate dessert.” Also, in another story, she describes the second marriage of two divorcees and makes the comment that a person cannot get out of one broken car step into another and expect it to run perfectly. Brilliant!

The stories in this are ordinary but beautiful and true. There are a few I desperat...more

like · see review

May 18, 2011 cat rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 100-in-2011

2011 Book 54/100

This was a beautifully written collection of short stories that draw their strength from the many ways that families fall apart and come back together again. Loss, grief, separation are all primary themes, and the characters are so well drawn that you ride those thematic roller coasters right along with them. Several of the book's stories dealt with the loss of a child. As Kirkus Reviews wrote about one of them, "“Her Firstborn,” is the tender story of a young father-to-be haunt...more

like · see review

Jun 05, 2012 Laura rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Author Ann Packer recently gave a talk locally and afterwards I bought a signed copy of her book, so it was at the top of my stack of books by my bed. Turns out short stories are the perfect bedtime reading, in terms of moving through a book in tiny bites. Packer's stories all concern ordinary people dealing with life turning points like coming-of-age and fractured marriages, and, often, loss in their lives. The stories are smart and knowing, like talking to a really good friend. My favorite, I...more

like · see review

Jun 28, 2011 Julie Ekkers rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I so enjoyed this collection! The opening story is actually a novella. I thought it and all of the stories were uniformly strong. My favorite in the collection were the last two, in particular, the penultimate story, in which the reader is introduced to a new father-to-be, whose wife had a child with her first husband, who died at five months from crib death. The transformative effect of his own child's birth of his understanding of his wife's loss is so, so well done and moved me to tears. I al...more

1 like · like · see review

May 12, 2011 Shuriu rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm shocked that in the final story, "Things Said or Done," Sasha doesn't remember Richard AT ALL, when she was his first love and he remembered her always. It's lovely to read about the characters again through different lenses -- time and perspective. Richard's perspective in "Walk for Mankind" and Sasha's in "Things."

The course of true progress is boring. You don't just suddenly become an outdoorsman, just as you don't just suddenly become assertive and independent, ridding yourself forever o...more

like · see review

Mar 29, 2012 Jodi rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Not sure

Shelves: short-stories

Ehhhhh! Not my favorite and I'll admit that I scanned a few of the stories in this book because I just couldn't get into them. I don't normally pick up collections of short stories but I saw the author's name and remembered "The Dive from Clausen's Pier" which I really liked. Towards the end of the book, I found a few stories I liked such as "Dwell Time." I wonder though by the ending if the wife is going to stay with her husband and fear him disappearing again or if she is going to "stick" with...more

like · see review

Jul 29, 2011 Jane rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm still waiting for another novel from Packer, so in the meanwhile I was curious to see what she's been working on. Here we have an author much interested in the complexities of human relationships and clearly skilled in capturing the nuances in words. The first and last stories in the collection feature the same character, Sasha, and reading the second of the two was like attending a forty year class reunion and being just a bit surprised at the turns the life of someone you thought you knew...more

1 like · like · see review

Jun 02, 2011 Kathy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A strong collection of short stories from Ann Packer. (And yes, it is a collection of short stories, so please don't give it one star because you mistakenly thought it was a novel). Most of these stories deal with loss. The worst is over and now the characters have to figure out a way to keep on stumbling through life.

I found Molten, the story of a woman mourning the death of her teen-age son to be gut-wrenching, but not treacly in the least. "Her Firstborn," told by a soon-to-be father whose wi...more

1 like · like · see review

Nov 06, 2011 Lormac rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a book of stories...well, it starts with a novella, but then becomes a series of short stories which have nothing to do with each other ... well, except that the last story is supposed to be about some of the characters in the first story 35 years later.... well, except that these characters behave nothing like they did 35 years earlier. So what is the point of having the same characters in the first and last stories? Who knows. I hardly even cared.

At some points, Packer gets a character...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 24, 2011 Sue Pelman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Loved, loved, loved it! The characters are so real, the relationships understandably complicated, the situations plausible and diverse. It reminds me of Olive Kitteridge, partly because it's a collection of stories, but mostly because both authors are gifted at describing life experiences in succinct vividness that instantly lets the reader in. I want to know more about each one of the characters and where their lives have gone -- are going. I also want to keep tabs of Ann Packer, and will start...more

like · see review

Jul 29, 2011 Peri Kinder rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm really not a fan of short stories. I guess I'm just not intellectual enough to understand things that are brief and vague. I need things spelled out for me in novel length. However, the short stories in "Swim Back to Me" by Ann Packer were well-written tales of loss and heartbreak, and the day-to-day grief of life.

I know. Pretty depressing. And I've been consciously avoiding depressing books lately.

But Packer writes emotion VERY well and it was easy to get lost in her tales. As I always do,...more

like · see review

Jul 30, 2012 Jeannine rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, short-stories

I'm sometimes puzzled how these sorts of collections are organized. This one begins with a novella, followed by a few short stories and closing with a continuation of the novella. Just weird.

**spoiler ahead**

That said, I really liked the short story Molten, which tells the story of a mother dealing with the death of her son by listening to his hard core music collection when her daughter and husband are not home. The son was killed saving a child from an oncoming train. The way the mother deals...more

like · see review

Apr 29, 2012 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

i hate it when i don't read a book's description close enough to realize that the NOVEL i think i am getting is actually a collection of short stories. i am not a huge reader of stories, i usually prefer novels (although there are some really great stories out there, 'the lottery' by shirley jackson comes to mind, as well as 'the ballad of the flexible bullet', one of my favorite king tales). i had read 'the dive from clausen's pier', also by ann packer, and LOVED it, so i forged ahead with this...more

like · see review

Feb 15, 2011 Christy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

I truly enjoyed this book. And even with 2 small children, I managed to read it in only 2 days!! It consists of two novellas framed by other short stories that are definitely well worth the read.

1 like · like · see review

Apr 02, 2012 Carla rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Usually I don't read stories, I prefer to read longer novels, instead of trying to understand the story (I often don't get them) and getting into the new one. I didn't realise this was not a novel, when I picked up the book from the library, but started to read anyway. Soon I was captivated by the first story; the characters and Ann Packer's writing style. The style is simple but the stories are complicated characters ("real" one could say), often struggling. Still I didn't find it a negative bo...more

like · see review

Apr 15, 2012 Judy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love the short story form and Ann Packr is a master. Having said that the first and last entries in this book are both novellas that focus on two separate periods in the life of Sasha Horowitz--first as a 14 year old trying to grow up as quickly as possible, and then as a 51 year old woman trying to play peacemaker in her family, especially between her estranged parents. Each of the stories in this collection deals with the complexity of human emotion and human interactions. Packer tackles top...more

like · see review

Mar 16, 2012 Lori Weir rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are just some many things I love of this collection of stories. To list a few:

- They are all "emotionally searing stories" dealing with issues of intimacy, misunderstandings that cause distancing, betrayals, and the problems that people have with understanding and knowing one another. Each story is strong and brilliant in its own way.

- Packer is meticulous in observation and scrupulous in sympathy. She is tough and realistic. Her characters are complex but fully understood. She allows raw,...more

like · see review

Oct 31, 2011 Ronya Misleh rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Short stories were a nice departure from the other things I have been reading lately. And Ann Packer is always a pleasure--deep enough so you don't feel stupid but not too deep that you feel stupid. I liked how the compilation had bookend stories, giving us some of the characters from the first story in the last. I will say the first story was much more enjoyable and had more depth than the last one. The rest of the stories were also well-done, though there was one in particular that really left...more

like · see review

Sep 24, 2011 Sarah rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I picked up this book because I stumbled across a review in the reading section of the May 2011 issue of O Magazine, and they made this book sound dreamy. Plus, I had also read Packer's novel "The Dive Off Clausen's Pier," which wasn't bad.

Sigh. You win some, you lose some.

Needless to say, this book is a loosely-linked series of short stories, mostly set or referenced to the SF Bay Area. One story touched me ("Her Firstborn") and the rest struck me as prose that I'm supposed to like because some...more

like · see review

Jul 12, 2011 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The short stories in this strong, character-driven collection blew me away. I knew from the first story that I'd love Ann Packer's writing, and I was correct. Brilliant, beautifully written, pitch perfect characterization. One of the stories that most sticks with me is that of a woman trying to come to terms with the death of her son. He died saving another child from being hit by a train. The main character's confrontation with the child's parents is one of the strongest scenes I've read, and t...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 96 97 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (10)

More editions...

Genres

Short Stories

50 users

Book Club

5 users

Adult

4 users

Contemporary

3 users

Literature

3 users

Drama

3 users

Adult Fiction

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Ann Packer

Ann Packer is an American novelist and short story writer, perhaps best known for her critically acclaimed first novel The Dive From Clausen's Pier. She is the recipient of a James Michener Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Packer is the daughter of Stanford University law professor Herbert L. Packer and Nancy Packer, a writer and former professor of English and creative writ...more

More about Ann Packer...

Books by Ann Packer

Stitch: Contemporary New Zealand Textile Artists

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Swim Back to Me

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Swim Back to Me

“Such is the lot of the narcissist's child, to inherit her parent's umbrage over the world's indifference.” — 1 person liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Swim Back to Me
avg rating	preview: Swim Back to Me Goodreads rating: 3.25 (1333 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12342962-swim-back-to-me?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333579881l/12342962.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12342962-swim-back-to-me?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Swim Back to Me by Ann Packer[/url]

Swim Back to Me

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website