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ketmanie's review against another edition
3.0
a haunting reminder of grief’s patience, always lingering and barely perceivable. we can escape to our imaginations only briefly before reality demands an audience. an easy and enjoyable read, though I wished it was more gripping
deecreatenola's review against another edition
4.0
This book is brilliant, but it's going to take you 2/3 of it to begin to feel that. Up until that point you're going to wonder if the book is going anywhere and even what is going on.
I've long had a fascination with Bobbie Ann Mason. She was one of the writers who really pushed me toward more literary fiction. In Country changed my life in many very personal ways.
But Mason doesn't just hand you the story. You have to discover and uncover it, and that's no more apparent than in this book. She brought the Summer of Love and the Vietnam War era to life, but not in an in-your-face way. The Ann we see in this novel is a student on the periphery of the movements, not a central figure, a student and a lover, a farm girl displaced far from home.
Mason doesn't go for flowery language. Her brilliance comes in small, everyday moments. Dialogue that's both mundane and transcendent.
At times I thought this would be a 3-star read; at others, a 5-star read. But 4 feels right. I really liked it. It challenged me but I kept at it and was rewarded.
I've long had a fascination with Bobbie Ann Mason. She was one of the writers who really pushed me toward more literary fiction. In Country changed my life in many very personal ways.
But Mason doesn't just hand you the story. You have to discover and uncover it, and that's no more apparent than in this book. She brought the Summer of Love and the Vietnam War era to life, but not in an in-your-face way. The Ann we see in this novel is a student on the periphery of the movements, not a central figure, a student and a lover, a farm girl displaced far from home.
Mason doesn't go for flowery language. Her brilliance comes in small, everyday moments. Dialogue that's both mundane and transcendent.
At times I thought this would be a 3-star read; at others, a 5-star read. But 4 feels right. I really liked it. It challenged me but I kept at it and was rewarded.
brooke_review's review against another edition
3.0
It is not something that I like to admit, but I completely missed the central plot point of Bobbie Ann Mason’s Dear Ann - that this entire novel is an imagining of an alternate life. It wasn’t until I started reading reviews for this historical fiction novel that I discovered that I overlooked a key detail of this book - that the story wasn’t “true” to the narrator Ann Workman’s actual life. Perhaps that is because the book moved rather slowly in the beginning, focusing on Ann’s ruminations as an older woman, and apparently contemplating on what her life might have been had she taken a different path. I guess I tuned some of this out.
So here is what I have been able to piece together about Dear Ann. Author Bobbie Ann Mason often wondered what her life might have been had she chosen one college over another. She wrote this idea into her character Ann, who also ponders about another life. Dear Ann is Ann’s “alternate life” - the one she might have had if she had gone to Stanford and immersed herself in the counterculture of the 1960s. It seems that the love interest at the center of the story - Jimmy - was the love of Ann’s life both in her fantasy and her actual life, but Dear Ann shows what their relationship might have been like on the other coast.
Dear Ann is a high concept novel that is not marketed as such. I am not typically so dense, but having it more strongly pointed out that this story was not Ann’s actual life would have increased my enjoyment of this book because I do tend to enjoy myself contemplating “what if?” Instead, I found myself kind of baffled and confused at the end that I missed the whole point of this book.
Concept aside, Dear Ann is a deep dive into the 1960s, exploring the music, drugs, war, and movements that raged through the latter half of this decade. Although sometimes vaguely written, Dear Ann is still an interesting portrait of a pivotal time gone by.
So here is what I have been able to piece together about Dear Ann. Author Bobbie Ann Mason often wondered what her life might have been had she chosen one college over another. She wrote this idea into her character Ann, who also ponders about another life. Dear Ann is Ann’s “alternate life” - the one she might have had if she had gone to Stanford and immersed herself in the counterculture of the 1960s. It seems that the love interest at the center of the story - Jimmy - was the love of Ann’s life both in her fantasy and her actual life, but Dear Ann shows what their relationship might have been like on the other coast.
Dear Ann is a high concept novel that is not marketed as such. I am not typically so dense, but having it more strongly pointed out that this story was not Ann’s actual life would have increased my enjoyment of this book because I do tend to enjoy myself contemplating “what if?” Instead, I found myself kind of baffled and confused at the end that I missed the whole point of this book.
Concept aside, Dear Ann is a deep dive into the 1960s, exploring the music, drugs, war, and movements that raged through the latter half of this decade. Although sometimes vaguely written, Dear Ann is still an interesting portrait of a pivotal time gone by.
cami19's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
thislibrarianisreading's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
starrspirit's review against another edition
5.0
Beautiful poetic writing. Easy to breeze through as in a trance of words. Anything by Mason is a go.
emfujino's review against another edition
3.0
I can appreciate what was attempted in the storytelling, of the what-ifs of following a different path in life, but I was often confused about what was real and what wasn't. Didn't help that I did not like the character Ann. I did enjoy that the book was like a journal, and you had an unreliable narrator of sorts, but it got too messy for me to follow at times.
nlghtshade's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
jsslwy's review against another edition
4.0
When I started this, I didn’t feel like I was going to love it but wow. It’s a story within a story, a woman trying to rewrite her past, but everything falls the same way anyway. Young love, older love, just beautiful.