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A review by brooke_review
Dear Ann by Bobbie Ann Mason
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.