Quiet conflict

Ann Packer has been looking in our windows.

The majority of readers of contemporary literary fiction in America -- especially fiction written by women -- are women themselves, and in her new novel, "Songs Without Words," Packer has tapped into the things that worry many of these readers: love and satisfaction in their relationships, the emotional and psychological health of their offspring, the terrible possibility of spiritual and familial dissolution.

"Songs Without Words" describes a childhood friendship tested by the challenges of adult lives that bear the friends along separate paths. Packer solidifies the reputation she established in the enormously successful "The Dive from Clausen's Pier" as an uncannily observant chronicler of contemporary American domestic life. "Songs Without Words" touches every nerve exposed by the solidly middle-class dilemmas of today's parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and lovers. There are no wars or plagues here, no suicide bombers or political turmoil. Instead, there is the fraught landscape of suburban life with its troubling questions about marriage, parenthood, friendship and fulfillment.

Sarabeth and Liz grew up across the street from each other, their girlhood friendship deepened by the tragedy of Sarabeth's mother's suicide when the girls were in high school. Packer offers their history in a brief prologue, and the first chapter of the novel finds Liz married with two teenaged children and contentedly immersed in her roles as wife and mother. Sarabeth, on the other hand, is still single, uncertain about her life and pursuing a career as a house stager, someone who creates the ambiance of cozy domesticity in homes people are trying to sell, a job that seems like a painful destiny for someone whose own childhood was interrupted by domestic tragedy.

Of the two, Liz appears to have it all, but when her 15-year-old daughter, Lauren -- the novel's most heartbreaking portrait -- falls into the grip of adolescent depression, Liz's world falls apart. And so does Sarabeth's; Lauren's unhappiness brings Sarabeth dangerously near to the memory of her own mother, and her retreat from Liz is both cowardly and -- this is Packer's generosity at work -- completely understandable.

The only thing that can drive old friends apart more surely than death is unhappiness, and it seems that Liz and Sarabeth's estrangement will separate them permanently. "They all seemed irrevocably distant, the people she knew," Sarabeth thinks, "as far away as Earth was from the moon."

There are some novels that show us the "other," and in doing so expand our ideas about humanity. "Songs Without Words" is a novel that shows us -- tenderly, and with a full awareness of the precious dignity and indignity of human experience -- ourselves.