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

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

In this episode of Oprah’s Book Club: Presented by Starbucks, Oprah and Ann Packer discuss Some Bright Nowhere, Ann’s poignant new novel and Oprah’s 120th Book Club selection. This book explores what happens when a wife's dying request shatters everything her husband believed about their 35 years together. Ann’s evocative and beautifully written novel inspired a thought-provoking conversation among readers at a Starbucks coffeehouse in New York City. As our audience discussed the inherent challenges and life-changing insights that come with the privilege and responsibility of caregiving, they were warmed by a Starbucks holiday classic: the Peppermint Mocha. BUY THE BOOK! https://www.harpercollins.com/products/some-bright-nowhere-ann-packer 00:00:00 - Welcome Ann Packer, author of ‘Some Bright Nowhere’ 00:02:40 - Thando shares her feelings about the main characters  00:04:50 - How Ann created the story  00:06:50 - Ann knew the ending before she started 00:07:38 - Recurring theme in Ann’s books  00:10:35 - Ann takes on hard questions  00:14:50 - How Ann wrote from the male perspective  00:17:07 - Support for male caregivers  00:25:30 - Male and female caregiving differences  00:30:38 - The difficulty of speaking your truth  00:31:54 - The power of a dying wish  00:33:48 - What cancer takes away from people  00:39:29 - What can be learned from loss  00:40:32 - Ann wants to normalize talking about death  00:42:50 - How it feels to hit send on your finished book SUPPORT THE SHOW Learn more about Jack’s Caregiver Coalition - a national non-profit that aims to help male caregivers cope and navigate the stress and isolation of caregiving. https://www.jackscaregiverco.org/ Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: Instagram Facebook TikTok Listen to the full podcast: Spotify Apple Podcasts #oprahsbookclub Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anne is here! How wonderful. Good to see you. You wearing one of my favorite colors, purple. It didn't 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. Hi, everybody. I'm so happy to watch. 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, merry, merry, minty way to warm up this 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 Anne Packer, the beloved Anne 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. Everyone in our audience has read the book, and I hear it brought up some strong feelings for many of you. Diane, where are 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. Strong 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 this playing 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. She 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 into strong-arming him every single time. Emotional intellectual abilities and she's just whipping him up into all sorts of shapes. So 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 I had a, 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 Elliott through this whole process. But in spite of that, I'm choosing it as an obvious bookcloth selection. 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. her 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 wow moment that sets the rest of this story in motion. Welcome, the beloved, Ann Packer. So great to have you here. Thank you, sir. 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. I 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. That any, 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. And that stayed with me for a long time. But at the same time, 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 Klausen's peer, 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. 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. 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. At the same time, four months for a first draft is pretty much unheard of for me. It's unheard of. 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 writing 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. And I think that's how the speed has. 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? Well, they were served... It's because a person had another expectation. Yeah. And they wanted to... Let me think about that for a moment. Yeah. You're right.

Okay. Yeah, it's true. right and to live your truth whatever that might mean sometimes it's great for everyone else and sometimes it's not and then that's so interesting that you say that and 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 they didn't have anything to do with who they were or what they wanted And 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 Elliott's point of view. Why?

So at the beginning, I had to hear, had an idea of a more expansive novel. And what I thought I would do was start and 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. And 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 you to write. And 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. The holidays are back at Starbucks, so share the season with a peppermint mocha. Starbucks signature espresso, velvety mocha, and cool peppermint notes, topped with whipped cream and dark chocolate curls. Together is the best place to be at Starbucks. Welcome back to the Oprah podcast. We're speaking with novelist Anne Packer about her beautiful new book. Some Bright Nowhere, my 120th Oprah Book Club pick.

We wanted to hear from people who've gone through a similar experience as Elliot, and we have Kyle here in our audience. Kyle, where are you? I'm right here. Hi. Hi, everyone. I'm Kyle, Woody. And my story is essentially Elliot.

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 Elliott's story,

it made me feel like I'd stepped into a time machine. Was it triggering for you two? Absolutely. I would think that this would be triggering if you've lived it. It was, you know, how scared he was. yeah how isolated how um ill-equipped insecure and how and how throughout it there was this unspoken pressure that i felt and and i 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?

After. It was very difficult. It was a very difficult time. And that wasn't, 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. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Wait, just a man that hair. 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 did you have 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. And 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 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 and is how 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. Well, 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 could collaborate. It'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 is 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 Elliott, 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.

I felt like I could write, I mean, it's a third person. It's told, you know, is 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 Jacks, Caregiver Coalition. Their inspiration was a family friend named Jack who told them to serve the caregiver. It's a lonely job and they are 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 jack's caregiver co.org. The URL is there on your screen. I just finished a podcast with Emma Willis, who is Bruce Willis's 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. So 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 of the person you're caring for is is absolute for folks on this role yeah yeah um i'd like to ask other men in this audience you know if you were elliott do you think you'd agree to move out yes no uh no i would not i wouldn't give up my home um if we've created that together i would still give her a wish but i would probably go into another space in the 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 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 i just wouldn't do that you don't see yourself doing that you don't see yourself i would be selfish in that way as claire is selfish with her wish so okay okay yes sir um 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 yeah 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 upstage the cancer and it took that huge life event to kind of reveal what was going on. So in the long run for Elliott, it might be a blessing, but it was still hard. Was it? That's what I was going to ask, Anne. What was, does Anne, does Claire believe that her friends can give her something obviously during these final days that Elliott can't or won't be able to?

She does. And it stems from an experience she had as a caregiver. 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 because 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 um it's it's 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 um elliott just sort of accepts that on face value and 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 war of, this war of 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.

She'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 insensitably. 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. She 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, Anne Packer and I, 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. Two 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 all. 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 i just cried i thought was anne with me like how would you know that such in-depth um 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 you're being strong we came in and just held the space for her to be be however she was. She lived for four days. And I, it's nothing against the husbands. Like, that's, you know, I felt for Elliott. 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. And 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 happen. 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. 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, or 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 to back to Maine? And they had those final days there. You understood that.

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. You people breathe.

I don't want you in here, but. Exactly. Exactly. To the last breath. But so exceptionally written, and I felt like you were sitting with me during that whole experience. It 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 love. 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. You'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. 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, as you were saying. And I think it helps to understand, too, she spent, you know, rather than having, like, a girl's weekend, And she spent the last few months of her life in bed writing notes to my boys. So 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. This is what's going to happen when I die, that daddy's going to want to marry somebody else. The daughter was only six, so she did the first. for every birthday up until 18. And that takes a lot of time and thought and energy to do that. 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 of 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, the way she expressed it was really what she wanted, but she never said why. She never gave Elliot a reason why he had to leave for her to have this experience. So I was just curious if you felt that that was symbolic of relationships, that sometimes we just have really hard time

speaking the truth to one another. And at times, perhaps it's easier to just take what you need and worry less about other people's feelings. You know, it's interesting. First of all, or back up, I'm sorry for what you're going through with your mother. My mother just died of complications of Alzheimer's and it's a very long, hard passage. So I'm sorry for that. I think Claire told as much of the truth that she could and the version of the truth that she knew at the time. I think one thing that I try to do in books is weave together what's going on consciously for the characters

and then what's going on unconsciously. And we don't want to give the ending away, but I think one of the journeys in the book is Claire and then Elliot coming to understand what was really motivating her, but she couldn't have told him that at the beginning because she didn't know it yet. Tassan? Hi. Hi.

So when I was reading the book, I really felt like the story was pushed forward by Claire's once and desires. And I was curious to know, like, what are your thoughts about kind of the final once and desires of the terminally ill, and should their wants or do their wants hold more weight than those of their caregivers or their loved ones? I think they do often. I haven't been personally involved in that many situations, but I would say there's no friend or family member of mine who has died, who's experience. wasn't privileged over everybody else's.

This is it, you know? I think having someone make a dying wish is a very powerful thing. On page 42, you write, she had given him his fatherhood. It wasn't just that she had given him children. She had given him his way of being a father, the greatest gift of his life, and after the gift that was Claire herself. But alone out here with her so far away and so close,

to being entirely gone, he was lost. Do you ever make yourself cry with your own writing? Because I know a lot of people did. I would say, well, not while I'm writing. Yeah. Embarrassingly, when I read it afterwards sometimes. You do, tear up. I have on occasion, yeah.

Yeah. And on page 133, you write, Cancer had taken something from her that was not energy or verb or ambition. It wasn't happiness or even contentment. It was an essential part of her that she could name. She could only miss it. I can ask you this, who's watched your friend,

what do you think cancer takes away from people? And then I'll let you answer that too. For my friend who just passed, it took away the life. She had more to do. She was very angry. It took away her inner, like her essence. And I also wanted to mention that I found it curious with her at the end that she was so sad for her husband that she was disappointing him,

like, at the end, oh, I'm leaving. And I found that really interesting that, like, there's guilt at the end that you're the one who, and you touched on that, you wrote about that, and that was so insightful. But you lose your inner essence of who you are. Cancer just takes that away. What do you think? it takes away your identity as someone who doesn't have cancer in a certain way, you know what I mean? It changes everything.

You're no longer living in the land of people who haven't been affected by this thing. And once you have been with a disease like cancer, are you ever really out of the woods? So it kind of, it takes away your sense of confidence that you're going to have the life you always thought you were going to have. That's interesting. Did you find that too? Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. Because now you're forever a cancer patient. That's why I know a lot of people hide it for as long as they can, because they don't want to be known as the cancer patient, because you're no longer seen as a full-bodied person. You've lived in the land of the ill. You've lived in the land of the ill. Okay.

Colleen, where are you? My story is I lost my sister to pancreatic cancer and a year later my brother called to say he had pancreatic cancer as well and would I come live with him and be his caretaker? And I did and he lived for 14 months and what I found interesting

about their relationship at first I was very angry with Claire but when Elliot was musing about their marriage and conceded that he always agreed with her and really in the end always conceded to what she wanted I wondered if Claire brought in her friends so he would fight to say no I want to be the one

that spends these last months, days, whatever you have left and also would he help her to fight death and to live as long as she could, as best she could, even with this prognosis that death is coming and there is no treatment left. So that's where I took it. That's such an interesting idea that she was basically testing him. Are you going to stand up for yourself and stand up for this marriage? That had never occurred to me while I was working um that never occurred to her but raised a point colin that never occurred to the author but i will

argue that the unconscious of my characters is unknown even to me so it could have been under the surface for her percolating right yeah i don't think she wanted anyone to help her fight it anymore. I mean, I think the whole point of this passage, they've stopped treatment. They're entering hospice. It's about what happens after you fight. I think people who've been married or together, as you were saying earlier, for 35 or 40 years, can relate to how Elliott is processing a future without Claire. And on page 231, you know, You write, he'd been talking about Claire for nearly 40 years, but it came to him that going forward, when he talked about Claire, he would be talking about someone who was fixed in time

who had stopped being. The idea pierced him with its strangeness. I know you must have felt this with your brother and your sister, too. I did, and I, you know, personal for me, I've never married nor do I have children. And I never even had a pet. So I only took care of me. And I thought, how am I going to take care of my brother, who's entrusting me? And I was scared that I wouldn't be able to do the job.

Did you tell him that? No. No. I said I will be there tomorrow. And I, you know, hung up the phone with them and packed my bag. And the whole hour and a half way there, I kept saying, how am I going to do this? But you did. But I did.

You know, when you love so deeply. Yeah. And he was the only brother, the oldest, I was the youngest. And I looked up to him my whole life. There was a 12-year age difference between us. Sure, there wasn't anything I wouldn't do for my siblings. And did it give you an opportunity to know him in a way that you hadn't before? Absolutely.

He was a totally different person. And because he was the oldest, he knew stories about the family and relatives. and my grandparents that I had never heard. I didn't know. We talked about all these things. It cleared up so many things for me. And what did it teach you about yourself as I was asking, Kyle?

It taught me under any circumstances that I can rise to the occasion and do what has to be done. It made me say, you better start living a life. And you better appreciate it in a different way. I am a home buddy. and all of that.

But it pushed me back into the world. And as a caregiver, you come out of the world around you because you're centered on just caring for this person. Yeah, yeah. More of my conversation about end-of-life care with the beloved novelist Anne Packer when we come back. Thanks for joining us on the Oprah podcast. Next, we're going to hear Anne's reflections on how she hopes her novel

will inspire readers to have conversations about the end of life. So this brought lots of things to this surface for you, which I'm talking about this character, Elliot, for whom it also brought so many things to the surface. He was saying, how could he have failed to understand that she would no longer be? He would never again just talk about her,

his wife in the other room, at home for the evening back in Connecticut, discussing her with someone who knew her, describing her to someone who didn't but might meet her someday. What did writing this book bring to the surface for you? I think I would, I think it focused my, my interest in the way people function in very, very difficult times. Yeah. And it was.

Part of the reason why you wrote the book to, the producer said to me, you wanted to normalize this conversation around the end of life. I think we have a hard time talking about it. I know that I've been in experiences when friends have been. you know, approaching death. And I've seen that it frightens people a lot. Yeah. And then that can come between them and the person who's so ill. So I think it's important to be able to talk about the fear

and then possibly move beyond it so that you can have that sort of beautiful intimacy, painful, beautiful intimacy with someone. I'm wondering if other cultures handle it. differently because it seems like in our culture it's like oh god you can't even say that you're going to die when every time i say that somebody you know particularly the girls are like oh don't say that well it's going to happen it's going to happen yeah i think so i think um i think there are many cultures that that do it a lot better um and part of part of the issue i think is that we

we don't have a lot of rituals around people becoming ill and dying. It's medicalized, not necessary, not, you know, that's not a bad thing. We need medicine, but this sort of rituals to handle just the notion of this passage into, you know, out of life. I just read an article about, you know, Canada has made it legal for you to euthanasia and how so many people now at the end of their lives, who know they're going to die and are planning their death ceremonies are having these rituals.

They're having these life celebration parties and making decisions about how they want that to happen. I know Claire would have been very happy with that. She would have been very happy with that. She had her own little party. She had her own little party. Or tried to. At the end of writing this story

and you put it away and you hit send and you send it off to your publisher, what sense of, did you feel a sense of relief, a sense of gratitude, a sense of... I think I felt a sense of completion. Completion. Yeah. Like, I don't let something go until I'm really finished with it, happy with it.

I've rewritten it a thousand times. And that send, that send moment is sort of a way to formalize saying to yourself. Done. It's done. You finished? It is done. Yeah. Thank you so much.

for some right nowhere. Thank you, thank you. And thank you to this audience. Thank you, Kyle. Thank you, Jenna. Thank you for sharing your stories with us. Thank you for living through that. And then rising to be someone even better

than you thought yourself to be, to be able to do that. I really have great admiration and highest regard for you all being able to do that, for your friends, for your relatives, for your brother and your sister. Talking about great books, y'all, is one of my favorite things in life. So thank you for sharing in that with me.

Some Bright Nowhere is available wherever books are so. A heartfelt thank you to our wonderful partner, Starbucks, for all of your support and bringing together good books, good coffee, and good people. These are good people. Good thinking people in our neighborhood Starbucks cafe is a perfect place to cozy up with a book. Starting with that peppermint mocha. Go well, everybody. Thank you, Anne.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much.