I did not like this book mainly because I could not figure out why she needed to move all the characters to Stanford. ( )

I've not read any Bobbie Ann Mason for twenty years or more, not since IN COUNTRY and her SHILOH stories. Then I saw DEAR ANN mentioned on social media recently and knew I had to read this one. Because, like Mason, I too grew up in the fifties and was part of the sixties 'summer of love' and Sgt Pepper era, and remember the anti-war protest marches and the constant news coverage of the battles and body counts. And I have to tell ya, I absolutely LOVED this book. And for a number of reasons. First of all, it was so enlightening to get a young woman's viewpoint on those years, even if the narrator's remembrances are of an 'imagined' Stanford University and Palo Alto in 1967-68.

I've looked at a few other readers' reviews and reactions to DEAR ANN, and I get it that they were confused or put off by the the way Mason framed Ann's story, changing the setting from her real graduate school years in cold upstate New York to a warmer Palo Alto and Stanford, and throwing in her musings from fifty years later. Yeah, okay. I get it. So maybe it was a bit confusing. So what? Because what I loved most about DEAR ANN was the sweetness of the love story of Ann and Jimmy. Because there is never anything quite so magical as that first REAL love, which is what Ann wanted, what she was searching for. And Mason's descriptions of the way they "plunged into each other without any thought to consequences," and how "Holding each other, the intensity of the pleasure, was beyond anything described in her books, wasn't in any poem in the world." And then there is the silliness and fun of the "naming of the parts." Ah yes - bubble, pogo stick, the bandersnatch and dog toys.

"They were teenagers, shameless and silly. They were the first explorers. They sat cross-legged, two lotus blossoms, facing each other. Four naked knees nudging. She had never been this close with a boy, eyes open, staring at each other's nakedness."

With this kind of joy, discovery and wonder, there is bound to be some disappointments and heartbreak too, but I'm not gonna go into that here. I prefer the joy. In fact I was even reminded of another favorite book about that same kind of first love, Betty Smith's minor classic, JOY IN THE MORNING.

And I remembered too. What I was doing in those same years. In fact, fresh out of the Cold War Army, I was in my second year of college and had just met my wife-to-be, and by the end of 1967 we were married. And in that next year, when the anti-war protests were at their peak, we were living in college married housing and I was scrambling to get through college and into grad school, working part-time every night and weekends, only vaguely aware of the student protests and candlelight marches and sit-ins going on all around me. So DEAR ANN was a reminder and a revelation to me, of so much of what I missed. But I do remember the music, the songs, the anthems of the era, which are very much an essential part of Mason's novel. And I recall too the intensity of that first real love which she describes so poignantly, but also with humor and with such utter tenderness that she made me laugh and nearly weep with remembering. THOSE things I know about, and DEAR ANN brought it all back so vividly.

So no. I'm not gonna criticize the method or the framework of this book. Because I believe that it's the love story between this naive Kentucky farm girl and a boy from the Chicago suburbs that is the very heart of this book. DEAR ANN is all about love. And I loved it. Thank you, Bobbie, for bringing it all back. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

Dear Ann by Bobbie Ann Mason is a recommended, maybe, novel where a woman re-imagines her life and her first love.

Ann Workman is on a cruise ship with her dying husband, looking back at her life, her first love, and the choices she made. She re-imagines her life from the perspective if she had listened to her college mentor, Albert, and went from rural Kentucky to California to attend graduate school at Stanford in the 1960s. Ann not only desires a PhD she is yearning for a boyfriend. Then Jimmy, her first boyfriend appears in her California experience. This is during the time of the Vietnam War and the country is in turmoil, but especially California which is the apex of the counter culture and protests.

This is a quintessential the-road-not-taken novel. Dear Ann is without a question beautifully written, but there are some imperfections that are difficult to overlook. The look back at what might have happened if Ann went to Palo Alto, California, in the sixties is flawed. Would all the free love, LSD, pot, and the new Beatles album have made a profound difference in her life were it experienced in California? Would it have made a difference if she met Jimmy in California? The transitions from the present to the re-imagined past, with the present reappearing occasionally, feels awkward. There are details that are more reflective of someone leaving home. The letters her mother writes to her about things happening on the family farm in Kentucky are a good touch and feel realistic. The fifty-year-old letters from Albert seem less likely to have been kept.

The characters are written more as caricatures of stereotypes representing different points-of-view found in the sixties. They are all lacking emotional depth. Many of the daily experiences the characters go through seem insignificant. They are generally indicative of the setting or the times, but less important to any advancement of the plot. While this is a love gained and lost story, it also strives to be a historical novel set in the tumultuous sixties in California. In the final analysis, I didn't really care about Ann and her musings over what might-have-been-if-only. Perhaps if the novel had been just a reflection of her looking back at her first love and left out the whole California experience it would have resonated with me more.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2020/09/dear-ann.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3540226098 ( )

From the vantage point of a woman in her 70's on a Caribbean cruise, Ann looks back on her life and ponders a big "What If..." If she had made a different choice about where to attend graduate school and gone to Stanford instead of a fictional college in Upstate New York, how would her life have been different? She plays with the impact the different setting would have had, even with the same lifelong friendships she did have. Mainly she hopes in her daydreaming she can imagine a different outcome of her romance with Jimmy, the love of her life. The counterculture of the California 60's is like a main character of this novel, and as someone of Ann's generation I found it an authentic and nostalgic trip with Ann down memory lane. The heartache of the Vietnam War and the decisions young men were forced to make was embodied in Jimmy and his friends. The ending, back on a luxury cruise ship in the present, served as an effective contrast to Ann's imagined and real life during the 60's. ( )

I really don't know what to say about this book. From the start I was confused by whether or not Ann was in California, did Jimmy really exist, did Ann really experience the rise of 60's culture? The story was engrossing, with beautiful imagery and language and tenderness. But did it really happen? After being sucked in to the poetic love story, I feel cheated, left not understanding what the point of the story is and wondering why I invested my time to get to the conclusion that has left me just as baffled as when I started the book. I need Bobbie Ann Mason to set this story straight for me. ( )