Böcker av Bobbie Ann Mason

PULITZER PRIZE FINALISTFrom acclaimed author Bobbie Ann Mason, her Pulitzer Prize-nominated memoir chronicling three generations of her Kentucky lineage, spanning a century in the life of an American family."Mason gets to the heart of a whole generation.... She can write the hard truth about home, love, loss.... Immensely satisfying." ?New York Times Book ReviewPeople love and remember the novels of Bobbie Ann Mason because they ring so true. This dazzling memoir has the same power. In it, Mason tells the story of her own family?a multilayered saga of three generations, their aspirations, their conflicts, and the ties that bound them to one another. Spanning decades, Clear Springs gracefully weaves together the stories of Mason's grandparents, parents, and her own generation. The narrative moves from the sober industriousness of a Kentucky farm to the hippie lifestyle of the countercultural 1960s; from a New York fan magazine to the shock-therapy ward of a mental institution; from a county poorhouse to the set of a Hollywood movie. In the process of recounting her own odyssey?the story of an isolated girl who dreamed of distant places?Mason depicts the changes that have come to family, to women, and to heartland America in the twentieth century. Ultimately, Clear Springs is a heartfelt portrait of an extended family, and a profound affirmation of the importance of family love.

Bobbie Ann Mason's debut novel--"a brilliant and moving book... a moral tale that entwines public history with private anguish." --Los Angeles Times Book Review"How Ms. Mason conjures a vivid image of the futility of war and its searing legacy of confusion out of the searching questions or a naïve later generation is nothing short of masterful." --Kansas City Star Samantha "Sam" Hughes is in her senior year of high school in rural Kentucky. Her father, whom she never knew, was killed in Vietnam before she was born. Sam lives with her uncle Emmett, a veteran who appears to be suffering from exposure to Agent Orange. Amidst worrying about her uncle and yearning to figure out who she is and learn about the father she never knew, Sam develops feelings for Tom, one of Emmett's veteran buddies. Tom and Emmett attempt to shield Sam from the truth of what they endured, but she has become convinced that her life is bound to the war in Vietnam. In Country is both a powerful and touching novel of America's ghosts and a beautiful portrayal of a family, not unlike many others, left bruised and twisted by the war. At the time of its publication in 1985, Richard Eder's rave LA Times review concluded: "One of the questions for post-war American literature, dealt with variously by Updike, Cheever, Roth, Salinger and a host of others, is whether the larger capacities of the human spirit can be exercised, so to speak, in a motel room equipped with color TV and a drinks refrigerator. The answers vary; Mason has found her own striking variety of 'yes.'"

From the acclaimed author of the classics Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country comes a beautifully crafted and profoundly moving novel which follows a woman as she looks back over her life and her first love.Ann Workman is smart but nave, a misfit whos traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. While Ann fervently seeks higher learning, she wants what all girls yearn fora boyfriend. But not any boy. She wants the Real Thing, to be in love with someone who loves her equally.Then Jimmy appears as if by magic. Although he comes from a very different place, upper-middle class suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too, a rebel who rejects his upbringing and questions everything. Ann and Jimmy bond through music and literature and their own quirkiness, diving headfirst into what seems to be a perfect relationship. But with the Vietnam War looming and the country in turmoil, their future is uncertain.Many years later, Ann recalls this time of innocenceand her own obsession with Jimmyas she faces another life crisis. Seeking escape from her problems, she tries to imagine where she might be if she had chosen differently all those years ago. What if she had gone to Stanford University, as her mentor had urged, instead of a small school on the East Coast? Would she have been caught up in the Summer of Love and its subsequent dark turns? Or would her own good sense have saved her from disaster?Beautifully written and expertly told, Dear Ann is the wrenching story of one womans life and the choices she has made. Bobbie Ann Mason captures at once the excitement of youth and the nostalgia of age, and how consideration of the road not takenthe interplay of memory and imaginationcan illuminate, and perhaps overtake, our present.

The author of this text examines the girl detective in her various guises through a combination of childhood reminiscences and insights as a fiction writer and observer of American popular culture. She covers the Bobbsey Twins, Vicki Barr, Cherry Ames, Beverly Gray, Judy Bolton and Nancy Drew.