Ann Packer: "Some Bright Nowhere" | Oprah's Book Club

0:02Anne is here! How wonderful. Good to see you. You're wearing one of my favorite colors, purple. It did not occur to me. Do you ever make yourself cry with your own writing? Because I know a lot of people did. Embarrassingly, when I read it afterwards sometimes. You do. Tear up. Yeah.

0:28Hi, everybody. I'm so happy to welcome you to Oprah's Book Club, presented by Starbucks. We're in an empire state of mind here at a Starbucks cafe in the heart of New York City. And the holidays are here, and that means this month's drink pairing is a Starbucks classic, the peppermint mocha with flavors of chocolate and peppermint. It's a merry, merry, merry, merry minty way to warm up the season, along with a great book. And I have just the one for you right here. My 120th book club selection is Some Bright Nowhere. by Ann Packer, the beloved Ann Packer. It's a novel that explores what happens when a wife's dying request shatters everything her husband believed about their 35 years together.

1:18Everyone in our audience has read the book, and I hear it brought up some strong feelings for many of you. Diane, where are you? Thank you. Diane, some strong feelings? Let's hear it. Yes, actually, I've been married 40 years. And I thought it was really interesting in the book how the spouses could understand each other without necessarily speaking. And I thought that was beautiful. But at the same time, then for Claire to exclude her husband at her most intense time of life, I thought was almost cruel. And it really, it hurt me for Elliot. So a lot of strong feelings. Beautiful book. Thank you.

2:06Strong feelings. Beautiful book. Edward, where are you? Hi. Hi. So I lost my grandmother in 2016, nine years ago, to a battle with Alzheimer's. And what I found interesting was that death in the book is rather a process than like just one limited moment in life. And through the process, we learned that connection is important, that we all want to be seen, and that love is important. and at the end of it all, that's what matters. So beautiful way of displaying that. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Well, Tondo DeLomo is one of my daughter girls, a graduate of my school, who is a member of my family.

2:45She graduated from my school in South Africa. I met her when she was 11, going on 12. Her big dream was to come to America and become an actress and that's what she's pursuing here now. And she reads every one of my book club picks. I didn't make her do it. She started doing it on her own. And so we want to know what's your take. Well, first of all, every time I thought I had a problem with Elliot and how passive-aggressive he can be, I would realize my real problem is with Claire. And how she intellectualizes her way into strong-arming him every single time. Emotional, intellectual abilities, and she's just whipping him up into all sorts of shapes.

3:28So yes, really great book. Not a fan of Claire. That's exactly, I didn't tell you this, but when I called Anne to tell her, I was actually at the gym, and the call was set for like 2 o 'clock, and I wasn't going to make it home, so I just called you from the gym. And I said to her, I'm choosing this book even though I'm very annoyed with Claire and was annoyed with Claire through half of the book. I was totally annoyed by her, and her lack of empathy for Elliot through this whole process. But in spite of that, I'm choosing it as an OPS book club selection. Um, I'm not getting it. So I want you all to know, just to set up the plot a little bit, Claire is nearing the end of her life after an eight-year struggle with breast cancer.

4:16Her husband, Elliot, who retired early to be Claire's full-time caregiver. Now, he's retired, and he's there to take care of her. Then he's blindsided when Claire asks him to move out so her two best women friends can move in and take over as caregivers for her last weeks on Earth. It's a it's a wow moment that sets the rest of the story in motion. Welcome, the beloved Anne Packer. So great to have you here. Thank you. As I told you when I first spoke, I was so annoyed by her. Three quarters of the book. What made you come up with this story? So it was actually a scenario I heard described about people in real life.

4:58I heard there was this woman. She had been ill for a long time and was reaching the end stages of that illness. And her husband was deemed unsuitable, incapable of seeing her through the final weeks and months. So her two closest friends moved in and did the job themselves. And I was, it was, there was not a lot of detail in the way that I was told the story. It was just sort of this happened. And I thought, wow, it just blew my mind that, um, that a woman could do that. Yeah, that you could just expel your spouse because they weren't exactly right for the job, whatever that was going to be. And at first I was kind of taken with the notion of what that sort of womanly cocoon of care and love would feel like.

5:53and that stayed with me for a long time. But at the same time, I was, I kept thinking back to the man, like what was his experience of that going to be? Yeah, yeah. Well, I read that your bestseller, The Die from Clawson's Pier, took 10 years to write and that you wrote the first draft of this one in four months. Is that true? That is true. And I could say I've just gotten a lot better at my job. but I think the reason the first book took so long is that I was raising kids yeah and also hadn't had the experience of publishing a lot of books and learning to feel confident and to know when they were ready to go um and now that was almost 20 years ago I feel a lot more like I know what I want to do when I write a novel um at the same time four months for a first draft is pretty much unheard of for me.

6:48It was unheard of for a lot of people. I knew I wanted it to be really short. I knew how it had to end. So you knew the ending before you started? Well, I knew that it was going to have to end with the end of her life in some way. So I was always riding toward that moment. I didn't know at all exactly how they were going to get there, but I knew that early in the book, she was going to ask him to leave so that her friends could take care of her. And I just, I don't know, I'd been struggling with a different book for a while. And when I started writing this one, it felt really good. And I just worked hours and hours and hours every day.

7:36And I think that's how the speed happened. I read somewhere that you believe that the theme that runs through all your work is that space between what other people want or expect of us versus what we actually want for ourselves. So why are you interested in that space in between? I think that's so fascinating, actually. I guess I would say the reason is that For me, that's almost always what conflict is going to be about, interpersonal conflict. There's always a question of, well, if there's conflict, it's because someone has disappointed somebody. Right. And why have they done that? It's because the person had another expectation.

8:25Yeah. And they wanted to... Let me think about that for a moment. Yeah. You're right. Okay. Yeah, it's true, right? Yeah. Yeah. And to live your truth, whatever that might mean. Sometimes it's great for everyone else and sometimes it's not. And then you have to make a choice. Well, that's so interesting that you say that, Anna, because I tell people all the time, my girls and other people, sometimes they call me for counseling, that the reason you're so upset is because of your expectation. The other person is just doing what they're doing and you had another expectation for it that didn't have anything to do with who they were or what they wanted.

9:01And so your expectations did not align. So I think, would you think about this for a moment, y 'all? that your disappointments in life with other people is because you expected one thing and they did another. So trouble in life is expectations colliding. Yes, expectations colliding. Why did you decide, I had heard that in the beginning you were writing from Claire's point of view, and then you decided to flip it to Elliot's point of view. Why? So at the beginning, I had an idea of a more expansive novel, and what I thought I would do was start in Claire's point of view, move to one friend's point of view, move on to the second friend's point of view, and finally get to the husband's point of view.

9:44And when I was working on that, they had different names. I had to, they were different characters. So I always have to really find the right name for my characters. So at that point, it was Tom and Jane. And I wrote Jane's point of view for 10 pages. I switched to her friends, and I just ran out of interest in it. It didn't compel me the way I need material to compel me in order to be able to keep going. And I don't know why it didn't compel me. I think in retrospect, I wrote another novel about women's friendship. And so in some way, the terrain felt maybe a little too familiar. But then I started thinking about the husband and how that would be the hardest point of view to write.

10:31And as soon as I realized that, I was like, okay, that's what I have to do. So were you that kind of person as a kid? You want to take on the hardest question? I would probably say that I think as a kid, I would hear the hardest question and then try to break it down, try to deconstruct the question. Yeah, that's so interesting. I still do that. Like just now. Just now. Which I didn't plan. We'll be right back with a young widower who says Ann Packer's new book brought him to his knees. Welcome back to the Oprah podcast. We're speaking with novelist Ann Packer about her beautiful new book, Some Bright Nowhere, my 120th Oprah Book Club pick.

11:14We wanted to hear from people who've gone through a similar experience as Elliot, and we have Kyle here at our audience. Kyle, where are you? I'm right here. Hi. Hi, everyone. I'm Kyle, Woody, and my story is essentially Elliot's, only I was younger. In 2011, my wife, Sarah, was 34. I was 33. Our two sons were four and one. And Sarah was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. We expected she had two years at diagnosis. She had almost nine. For me, reading Elliot's story, it made me feel like I'd stepped into a time machine. Was it triggering for you too? Absolutely. I would think that this would be triggering if you've lived it.

12:05It was, you know, how scared he was. Yeah. How isolated, how ill-equipped, insecure. and how throughout it, there was this unspoken pressure that I felt, and I read in your work with Elliot, to project the opposite of all those things. And I also understood how Elliot felt when Claire asked him to leave because Sarah asked me for a divorce in 2016. While you were taking care of her? Yes. Oh, my gosh. Wow. And we remained close. How? It was very difficult. It was a very difficult time. And that closeness wasn't immediate. You know, I remember she dumped me on a Friday before Father's Day. But we remained close, and I actually had opportunities to care for her after the divorce, when her boyfriend, Doug, needed a break.

13:24Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait just a minute here. So did she have the boyfriend before you were taking care of her? No. So she was diagnosed. You started to take care of her as her husband. Yes. Yeah, and you had been her husband for how long? How long had you all been married? For about six years. Okay. And then she's diagnosed. Then you become the caregiver. Yes. And five years into the caregiving, she says, I don't want to be with you anymore. Correct. Okay. You know, when you're in your final days or your final season of life, things are different. You know, your decision-making is different.

14:07And I'm really, maybe the thing I'm most proud of is that through that experience of caring for her, Doug and I became very close. And to this day, we're raising Sarah's boys together in a way that I think Sarah would be very proud of. Wow. Wow. That is a story. So I was saying you would be very triggered in the book Some Bright Nowhere when Claire asks him to leave. Was that like a gut punch for you too? I got through like the first two chapters and it just brought me to my knees because, you know, that was my question for you, Anne, is how in the world did you have such a nuanced and accurate portrayal of what it's like to be a guy in that role?

15:07Well, first of all, I'm so sorry for what you went through and amazed by your story. especially that you and Doug are caring for the children and raising them together. That's incredible. How it's... That's part two of this novel. Hey, we can collaborate.

15:30It's what you do when you create a character. And for me, writing a man is not harder than writing a woman. It is or is not? It is not. It does not. It does not. Because in both cases, you're making an empathic leap into someone else's experience. And I think, you know, I am in my 60s. I've seen friends go through cancer and not survive. And I've seen the effect on their families. And I've felt the effect on me, you know, what it actually does to a friend, a small community. So the sort of feeling of being in that challenge and heartbreak was familiar to me. and in terms of creating Elliot, you know, I said I abandoned the other attempt, the one that had the different points of view in it and the trick for me is to get the voice and I started writing it and I found the voice very quickly.

16:47I felt like I could write, I mean, it's a third person, it's told, you know, it's he, not I, But I felt like I could write from his point of view very readily. And I think that just kind of guided me into rounding him out and figuring out, you know, some of the details. I read, Kyle, that your experience showed you that male caregivers need a lot more support. Is that true? Yes. Ten years ago, Kyle and two other men who were also taking care of their wives who were struggling with cancer co-founded a national nonprofit called Jack's Caregiver Coalition. Their inspiration was a family friend named Jack who told them to serve the caregiver.

17:37It's a lonely job and they're always forgotten. The group provides a much-needed support system that has helped countless men cope and navigate the feelings of isolation caregivers so often experience. I encourage you to seek their help if you need it. You can find them at jackscaregiverco.org. The URL is there on your screen. I just finished a podcast with Emma Willis, who is Bruce Willis' wife. And she's written a book called The Unexpected Journey about what it's like to be a caregiver. And she doesn't use the word caregiver. She says it's really care partner because you're there partnering with the person, that caregivers can be from the outside, but somebody who's in the home with the person all the time is a care partner.

18:30So you were a great care partner who was asked to leave through divorce. And I think that what you're saying is what she says in the book, that care partners need to take care of themselves first because most people just give and give and give until they're depleted and there's nothing there. Did you find that for yourself? Yes, absolutely. The focus on the other, the person you're caring for, is absolute for folks in this role. Yeah, yeah. I'd like to ask other men in this audience, You know, if you were Elliot, do you think you'd agree to move out? Yes? No? No. You would not? I wouldn't give up my home.

19:16If we've created that together, I would still give her a wish, but I would probably go into another space in the house. One thing that I really thought about Elliot's journey was the fact that he kind of just wilted away in what he was giving. Yes, he was trying to figure out how he could give her a wish, but at the same time, when he goes with his friends and he tries to reminisce, it just wasn't working for me. So I just couldn't really see, like, why would he give up the place that he grew with his partner? Even if it is her final wish, I just wouldn't do that. You don't see yourself doing that.

19:56I would be selfish in that way, as Claire is selfish with her wish. Okay. Okay. Yes, sir. I think I would honor the person's wish, but I would be very, very upset. Yeah. So I think it's just the fact that she has cancer and that she knows she's going to die. They know she's going to die. It's like a double whammy. Double whammy. So you would honor it, you would leave, but you would be pissed at it. I think I would definitely fall into the passive-aggressive zone. Yeah. As much as I would love to have a heroic, clear, clean breakthrough, I kind of see what happened. But I think that it just shed light on the fact that they had an emptiness in their relationship that almost upstaged the cancer.

20:45And it took that huge life event to kind of reveal what was going on. So in the long run for Elliot, it might be a blessing, but it was still hard. Was it? That's what I was going to ask, Anne. And does Claire believe that her friends can give her something, obviously, during these final days that Elliot can't or won't be able to? She does. And it stems from an experience she had as a support person for someone else. A friend she met in a cancer support group got to the end of her illness about a year earlier. I thought she was fantasizing about that. I thought she was making that a lot more fantastical than it really was.

21:33Because from her point of view, it was one thing. But who knows what the woman who was actually experiencing the cancer was going through. Maybe it wasn't all kumbaya, everybody, you know. Maybe she was annoyed with them all sitting there painting her nails and things, you know. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's one of the things that Elliot comes to in the middle of the book is this idea. She has said to him, it was so beautiful when my friend Susan was dying. There are all these women, her daughters, her friends. We just surrounded her with love. I want that. And Elliot just sort of accepts that on face value.

22:10And it's only about halfway through the book where another character says to him, that was her point of view. What about Susan's point of view? What about the point of view of the person who was actually dying? Yes, exactly. And that helps Elliot. Hearing that helps him not take it quite so painfully and personally. Yeah, I was wondering, though, why couldn't she include Elliot and all of them? Would he not fit with the other friends? Well, I think she had a very romantic idea of this female circle, this warmth and love from her women friends. And it's a really whimsical thing that she does. I mean, she doesn't plan it way in advance.

22:58She's ill. Does she even think about how this is going to affect him? Well, I think she thinks about it, and then she has that, you know, you or me thing. She's like, am I going to do this selfish act of requesting that my husband leave or not? And I think she thinks, well, here I am at the end. Don't we all want me to have the death I want? Yeah. And so she goes forward, not insensitively. And after she first says it, she kind of walks it back. It's not an easy thing for her to ask. But she... She not only asked it, she lived it, and they were drinking wine in there and laughing all the time.

23:35She did. She wanted to have some fun. She wanted to have some fun. In fact, if you think about the title of Something Bright Nowhere, she wanted the bright. She wanted the bright. Yeah. When the Oprah Podcast returns, Ann Packer and I talked to a woman who moved in with her best friend during her cancer treatment. A warm welcome back to you all. I'm with the New York Times bestselling author Anne Packer talking about her new novel that highlights the real life challenges of being a caregiver. Jenna, where are you? Right there, I thought so. So Anne, your book really cracked my heart wide open.

24:07Two years ago, my best friend was diagnosed with cancer and I moved in with her and lived with her for three months and then on and off for a full year. We got her through cancer. And it's a very special bond to be with someone through that whole journey. I mean, naps and talking and time you just don't get in real life. So that was experience number one. And then two weeks ago, my friend lived her last four days of her life, a different friend. And she asked me to come be there with her, with her sisters. And so this book, like your observations and what you talked about, like you said, I had to stop.

24:49I just cried. I thought, was Anne with me? Like, how would you know that? Such in-depth. Like what? Share with us. So to be there, the energy of women, of two sisters and myself, where her husband wanted her to be a trooper and you're being strong. we came in and just held the space for her to be however she was. She lived for four days. And it's nothing against the husbands. I felt for Elliot. But there is something about your women friends who can just hold space for you. And you can just be however you want to be. And we didn't even have to talk. You could just hold hands. Whereas there were times, and I know this is broad stroking it, but the husband wants to fix it.

25:40And what can I get you? And she was like, I'm done with the fixing. And she would look at me and say, please make this stop, you know? And so, and then just things that you talked about physically that happened. It is the nature of men to want to resolve the problem. It is, right, the nature to want to fix it. And at the very end, Oprah, there is no fixing. So there's just being. I got that. And I think female friends can do that for each other. You know, like... I learned that many years ago in the Oprah show, we were talking about the same thing, about the differences between men and women. You might agree, Kyle, that men...

26:14Or you guys might agree that men want... Okay, you're telling me this, so I need to now resolve it or fix it. Women just want to tell you. I'm just sharing my feelings. You don't have to fix anything. I'm just talking about it. And also, right to the very last day, we could have a joke or have like, and I get it for the partner. This is so serious. This is the end. Your girlfriends can make you have a giggle right to the end. So there's that type of feminine energy that, you know, maybe that's what we crave at the end. So you understood why they took her away and they went out and went back to Maine and they had those final days.

26:57I really did. And your question, Oprah, was what I was thinking about of why at the end do we do what we want for our loved ones? Or, you know, so was Claire being totally selfish? And I know people have strong feelings about that. But I saw the other side of I want my sisters and I want my girlfriend. And it was harsh to send him away. But does she get what she wants? Or are we people pleasing right until we close our eyes? Right until the last breath. Until the last breath. You people breathe, I don't want you in here, but... Exactly. To the last breath. But so exceptionally written, and I felt like you were sitting with me during that whole experience.

27:38It was so well written. Thank you so much, and I'm sorry you went through that. But I also see the beauty in it. It was an honor. Truly, it was an honor. I wanted to ask Kyle, what did this experience of giving yourself, this care partner, caregiving experience, and then being asked to leave, and then in the end, coming back in the end to care give with her new boyfriend, what did that teach you about yourself? Well, I think it taught me that I loved Sarah regardless. You know, she, I saw her in the end just having less capacity, less and less. And so she had, you know, so you think of it as calories.

28:26You've got so many calories to spend. And when we have our life ahead of us, we don't think of that in finite terms. But when we're staring down a terminal illness, that's all different. And so I think she saw me, someone who loved her, and she knew that, her boys, and some adventures she had never had. And she just did some math and made some decisions. And that wasn't about me. It wasn't an indictment of who I was. It took me a long time to get there. Yeah, that it wasn't about you, that it really was about her and her decision. And I think it helps to understand, too, she spent, you know, rather than having like a girl's weekend, she spent the last few months of her life in bed writing notes to my boys.

29:11So she's still very much alive in their lives because of that. So that took a lot of effort and time, and she wanted to spend it on that. Yeah, I know. I remember one of the, you know, people always ask me about the Oprah shows that I did, and everybody always thinks that the most, they'll say, what's the most exciting or the most memorable? Everybody always thinks it's going to be about celebrities. And I say, it's never about celebrities. It's always about real people. and one of the real people I remember was dying of cancer and wrote, not just wrote, but did tapes for every birthday for her daughter until she would turn 18 about what to do when you go to your first prom and this is what's going to happen with your period and this is what's going to happen when I die that daddy's going to want to marry somebody else.

30:01The daughter was only six so she did them for every birthday up until 18 and that takes a lot of time and thought and energy to do that. So all of us who are listening to your story admire the man that you showed up to be in that moment. We can say you should be proud of yourself for the man you showed up to be in that moment. Thank you. Robin. Hi. So I'm a caregiver myself for my mother who has dementia. I think first and foremost, I really appreciated the perspective that you took from the caregiver side. A lot of that resonated despite the difference in illness. Some of this you covered with regard to the relationship and Claire's desire.