July 1, 2020
In Mason's (The Girl in the Blue Beret, 2011) sixth novel, celebrated writer Ann Workman looks back on her life from the stateroom of a cruise ship, a cushy enough perch for some navel-gazing, to be sure. But Ann finds herself at sea, literally and figuratively, as she faces a life-altering event. Having come of age in the turbulent late 1960s, Ann, like so many of her generation, was influenced by the music and activism of that time. Instead of going to Stanford for graduate school, as she was urged to do by a favorite professor, Ann chose a safer school in upstate New York and that path, as the poem says, made all the difference. Now on this final voyage with her dying husband, Ann reimagines an alternative existence involving different school, different friends, different lover. Mason's time-shifting narrative can be difficult to follow, but she vividly recreates those heady counterculture days as a poignant backdrop for the regrets one often faces when one follows one's head instead of one's heart.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
September 7, 2020
Reality and fantasy clash in the flawed latest from Mason (after In Country). Ann Workman is on a Caribbean cruise when she begins reflecting on her decision 50 years earlier to go to graduate school at Harpur College in upstate New York instead of Stanford. While reading old letters advising her to go to Stanford from her former lover, Albert, Ann fantasizes an alternate life in Palo Alto alongside Vietnam protestors and psychedelic artists; interwoven are Ann’s own memories of historical events—mainly the escalation of the Vietnam War and the cultural shifts of the late ’60s—and her reimagining of what her relationship with Jimmy, a boyfriend who joined the military and fought in the Vietnam War, would have been like in progressive Palo Alto. The characters, however, suffer from a lack of emotional depth, and Ann, Albert, and Jimmy come across as stand-ins for stereotypes of the era—the undecided idealist, the hippie, and the patriot. The time-jumping setup, meanwhile, is clunkily handled. This convoluted tale will leave many readers feeling as if they’ve missed a crucial piece of the story.
July 1, 2020
In 2017, on a cruise in the Caribbean with her dying husband, Ann indulges in a "what if" review of her graduate school career in the late 1960s. What if she had gone to Stanford instead of Binghamton? Would being at the epicenter of the peace movement and living in the California warmth, with access to forests of redwoods, have changed anything? Would free love, LSD, and the Beatles have been any more or less significant? And would Jimmie, her first love, still have appeared and broken her heart? As she struggles to find her place in the world amid staggering societal changes, with letters from home keeping her somewhat grounded, Ann realizes that she can imagine a life in California but is unable to remove Jimmie from her story. The multi-award-winning Mason (The Girl in the Blue Beret) captures the poignancy of first love, its effect on everything that follows, and the na�vet� and uncertainty of youth in the chaos of cultural change, even as she gathers the many significant cultural issues of the era. VERDICT Highly recommended for readers of general fiction and those with a special interest in the Sixties. [See Prepub Alert 3/11/20.]--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from July 1, 2020
Mason's first novel since The Girl in the Blue Beret (2011) is a deeply moving meditation on one woman's life choices and the road she didn't take. Onboard a cruise ship in 2017, a troubled Ann Workman ponders her past. What if she had heeded her old college professor Albert's advice and gone to Stanford for graduate school instead of heading to Harpur College in upstate New York? It was the 1960s, and California was "at the center of the universe," as Albert enthused in a letter, one of many that Ann has saved over 50 years and that populate the narrative. How would Ann's life have changed? Fusing her memories with a writer's imagination, she creates a new storyline in which a na�ve young woman drives west "with an innocent boldness" to Palo Alto. Exploring this new world that is "both tantalizing and threatening," Ann gradually comes out of her shell, especially after she meets Jimmy, the "Real Thing" she has longed for. He too is an outsider, ashamed of his suburban Chicago background and intrigued by her rural Kentucky roots. Bonding over literature and music, they embark on an intense relationship against the backdrop of a Stanford campus "quivering with spontaneous demonstrations and teach-ins" against the escalating Vietnam War. Through this poignant romance, Mason vividly evokes the exhilaration and excitement of being young during such tumultuous cultural and political changes. It's no wonder that years later Chip, a friend of Jimmy and Ann, refers to that era as "the best time of my life, and of course the saddest." As Ann reassesses her choices, the reader senses that the 80-year-old author is using this haunting novel to also take stock of her own life. A beautifully written homage to the 1960s by a mature writer at the top of her literary power.
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