A great book for young people to get a real feel for what the Vietnam War has done to their generation. Sam Hughes, 18 year old girl, lives with her uncle who apparently has Agent Orange symptoms, and through him and a diary left by her dead father finds herself and comes to some conclusion about her parentage and her future. Her father died in Vietnam a few months after Sam was conceived. His diary is brutal, vivid, and gut retching to most readers. This is a brillant work which fits well in a humanities class of young people. I applaud the author for her keen insight into a crippling situation to many young peole.

When writing a memoir, authors are advised to write the first draft as if everyone is dead - and then to prune the damaging parts in subsequent rewrites. Perhaps Mason pruned a bit too much. This otherwise lovely and affectionate memoir of how it was to grow up in a small, working-class town in Kentucky in the 40s and 50s is a bit long on respect and caution - and a bit short on grit.
Otherwise, I loved it. I grew up in Kansas in the 50s and can relate to the pace, small-town values, and lack of danger (except from the "evil Communists" and "the bomb") that Mason portrays as such inherent parts of her roots. Her language, esp in the first part of the book focusing on her own childhood memories, is rich and multi-layered and pulls readers into every scene right along with her. In the rest of the book, she uses the techniques of creative nonfiction to weave a background narrative that spans the lives of three generations of women within the community.
A worthwhile read; it won't change your life, but it might make you think, and it's certainly a pleasant trip to take with this accomplished author.

Bobbie Ann Mason has written an honest and wonderful book dealing with her growing-up years in Western Kentucky, with her leaving the rural life and entering the urban world, only to return in her later years to Kentucky. The book will trigger a lot of similar memories in many readers, and should take its place alongside books by Russell Baker and others as a true and accurate picture of bygone eras.

I really enjoyed this book a lot! I didn't just read it; I pored over it and savored every word. "Clear Springs" is the family history of Bobbie Ann Mason, a woman born and raised in Kentucky. It explores not only her own memories of growing up in rural Kentucky, but also those of her mother and grandmother--three generations of women. The details are wonderful. Reading this book makes you feel as if these women are people you know - maybe your neighbors or relatives in your own family. This book takes you back to a time when life was simpler in some ways, but more complicated in other ways. I especially enjoyed the photos of Bobbie's family members in the middle of the book. I would be reading the story and then go flip back to the pictures to envision these people in my mind as I thought about their lives. It really brought the characters to life in a more vivid way. What a valuable way of preserving her memories of a people, a place, and a way of life gone by in the words of this book! With all of the millions of people in the United States, one might think their own life is fairly insignificant; however, when you read this book, one realizes that everyone has a story to tell, their own personal history from their special era in which they lived. This book is like a little slice of America. I recommend it to all! Happy Reading!

This collection of short stories is loved, even revered, by many fledgling short story writers, and with some legitimate reasons. Bobbie Ann Mason constructs a story well, and her characters behave as real people would. She rarely chooses to give the reader much of a sense of the landscapes in which she works, but when she does, she does it beautifully and economically. Frankly, though, I grew weary of the themes in her stories. In the middle of one of the stories, I think I screamed something like, "If I have to read one more story about dysfunctional relationships, I'm going to shoot myself!" I never did go through with it, in part because Mason does give the reader a taste of some likeable male characters in a few of the stories near the end of the book. I myself would never want to write stories which are, ultimately, as bleak as the stories in this collection, but Mason's bitter humor is often endearing, and her characters are interesting (if similarly crafted from story to story). If you want to read about people from rural Kentucky, read Wendell Berry instead; if you're looking for stories about relationships, read Joyce Carol Oates. Save this one for after you're read just about everything else.

This is a wonderful collection of stories. I read it originally as a student about 12 years ago and was happy to recently re-read it. Mason gives us an honest and very un-sensational look at the middle and lower class of the South but does so in a way that neither patronizes nor glorifies her subjects. Having grown up in the culture that Mason describes, I can say that she captures both the mystery and the mundane that is the South. The drama is so understated and she allows her characters a quiet dignity.

I was given this book by a friend about ten years ago. Somewhere in between, it went walkabout. It is such a haunting, beautiful set of stories that the chance to get it back - and in hardback - is not to be missed. Tales about working class life don't get much truer or more real than this. Very gentle, very thoughtful, very moving. Worth going out of your way for a copy.

From Aunt Jane's Girls to Sweet Valley High, series books for girls have been a staple of girls' literary diets. Bobbie Ann Mason (author of "In Country") is one of many who devoured series like The Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew. She looks back at the books with affection and the amused rememberings of adulthood, but also acknowledges some of the faults of the book - especially in matters of racism, stereotyping, bourgeois entitlement and sexism. She also brings some of the lesser-known girl detectives into the spotlight - especially Judy Bolton, a far more satisfying heroine than the rigid, frigid Nancy Drew. If a college course can be taught on Madonna, then this genre definitely deserves study and reflection for its influence on generations of little women.

Reading The Girl Sleuth was like getting in a car with a friend at the wheel and going back to the neighborhood where we lived from ages 10 - 12. Together we uncovered the probable reasons why my mother and the school librarian disapproved of Nancy Drew and what those series mysteries did for our self images as women. The overt mainstream racism of the earlier editions of the series books is shocking; it gives me some comfort to think that our culture has grown up in the last few decades to understand how very wrong that thinking was. This book was completed in 1975 when Mason was a young post-doc coming off a Nabokov dissertation. It is relatively free of scholarspeak, though the feminism and Freudian references are starkly of their time. It's not dated, however: Mason writes from the heart as well as the mind and this slim book is a timeless good ride.

This is a wonderful compilation of short stories, many of which i had already read in Shiloh. The common thread that i found is that the characters in these stories mean well, but are slightly clueless in this business of life. Here you have Leroy, whose life is disintegrating in front of his eyes, or Sam, who looks back at his long life not understanding how some things happened, or Nancy, wondering how she ended up so far away from home. But there's something very endearing about these people, in most cases illiterate, living in the periphery of middle class. A very enjoyable read.

Not only are the best stories from "Shiloh and Other Stories" here, but some excellent pieces from another volume as well. Even the cover of this book is great, as it illuminates the highly discussed snaking sidewalk in "Shiloh." The commentaries on the stories are gems as well, letting you inside the writer's mind. Wonderful book!

This book is very sad and emotional. The story of this couple is amazing. It makes you feel sorry for them, but at the same time happy because they share so much love.

This is a very short novel about a rural couple who have been married for more than forty years and the confusion and stress they face as the wife is hospitalized. It is a refreshing alternative to more popular and yet more sentimental stories that deal with spousal, parental, and sibling relationships and the conflicts associated with aging and mortality. Mason is a fine writer.

This was one of the most endearing love stories i've ever read. Spence and Lila are old and worn, but the love they have for each other is still pure and fresh, forty plus years after their marriage. That a love like this might exist, and the characters are so real that it is likely, gives me new hopes in life

This novel will capture your heart; the dialogue, the characters and the setting take you back to the early 20th century in rural America. Christie Wheeler, mother of three, is pregnant again and believes she will birth a monster as punishment for having impure thoughts of another man. Instead, she has quintuplets, each with their own little personality and appearance. Tragedy strikes, though, and Christie and her husband, James, must learn to deal with the loss of their babies. Bobbie Ann Mason does a fantastic job of depicting family life, industry and the media in the early 1900s. I would also recommend Weeds by Edith Summers Kelley. -- Melissa Galyon

"Feather Crowns" is a wonderful read for both it's story of Christianna Wheeler and her family and it's historic content. The book was both intruguing and entertaining as it painted a picture of life at the turn of the century and the hardships of trying to raise a family during that time. I strongly recommend this book if you enjoy reading southern genres and enjoy looking into the past.

Feather Crowns is a memorable novel that made me feel I had been transported to the Kentucky of 1900. I highly recommend it as an accurate "slice of life" as well as the story of a remarkable woman. The subject matter, the birth of quintuplets, is both the central theme and yet could be any unusual event in an individual's life. The language used is what one would expect to hear from the characters of that time, much as Twain's language in Huck Finn. I congratulate Bobbie Ann Mason for an outstanding book

IN COUNTRY, by Bobbie Ann Mason, is a post-Vietnam story about Sam, who is dealing with the aftermath of her father's death twenty years ago. As Sam faces her future, she has inner troubles to face, which is definitely understandable, especially as her character and myself are close in age. Sam's journey into adulthood looms in the near future, and she must pick a path to get to where she wants to be.
Sam lives with her uncle Emmett, whom she suspects is an Agent Orange victim. Fatherless and emotionally lonely, she tries to fit the pieces of her life into a puzzle, but they just don't seem to fit. With a baby stepbrother, a pregnant best friend, a flea-infested cat, and a small chunk of change, Sam shows the reader how to make the best of life's difficulties and tragedies.
Unfortunately, IN COUNTRY tends to drag on with unnecessary details, and my patience was thinned by the time I had reached the middle of the book. I was tempted to skip pages at some parts, but I decided to read the excess details that have absolutely no significance to the plot and theme.
This book teaches that as we go through hard and confusing times, we will always have a way to find truth and justice. Sam's journey to find her truth was almost like Odysseus trying to get back to Ithaca in the Odyssey- Sam had to overcome the obstacles by tying her best, and with a passion. Sam visits the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. to put the memory of her father at rest inside her soul, and to really feel the impact of the war. Sam learns that life goes on, even is she thinks it won't.
I would reccommend this book for people who like to read about the Vietnam War and the trials young people face in their lives. If you are an impatient person when it comes to books, you may want to avoid this one.

"In Country," by Bobbie Anne Mason is a great story about a girl that lost her father in the Vietnam War. She lived a wild life without a father. Her mother living nearby, but her, in her late teens, lives with her uncle. She has no discipline, yet gets along well. Her main strugle throughout the book is finding out what Vietnam was really like. She also wants to know what her father was like, since she never even met him. Her uncle, was in the war, but he made it home alive. Sam, the young girl, is worried about her uncle, scared that he has Agent Orange. All she has is him, and she doesn't want to lose him to the war too. All of this takes place in the early 80's. She is dealing with the past, in the future. Some things just never go away. There is so much more to this book, and if you love to read books about Vietnam or even just like to read, then I would recomend this story. It's not too long, and wouldn't take up too much time. Sometimes the book moves rather slowly, and you must be patient with it. The main theme from the book is that things in the past, really do still effect us today.

With so many bad contemporary novels hitting the best seller lists these days reading In Country was a breath of fresh air. Mason creates well-rounded, unique characters. Sam and Emmett are unlike any other characters that I have ever read about. Furthermore, the plot is original and insightful. I always enjoy reading about a place that is diffeerent from my own environment. Mason captures what life in a small Southern town is really like. Furthermore, I really appreciate learning new things frm a book. I walked away from this novel feeling more informed about the Vietnam war. Overall, In Country is a wonderful reading experience. Mason is a phenomenal writer.

ELVIS PRESLEY: Bobbie Ann Mason

Early on in this skimpy biography of The King, author Mason recounts Elvis' first taste of success when his early Sun Record recordings began to be played on the radio, "the sounds that came hurtling out of Elvis' unfettered soul were so real and refreshing it was as if some juke joint had opened up and racial harmony were a happy reality."

Oh, yeah! I think we can all relate to that. Who among us, upon hearing Elvis for the first time, didn't say, "man, I feel like racial harmony is a reality."

This short (169 pages), uneven effort is not as bad as that quote would indicate, but the reader would be better served by almost any of the Presley bios available with the exception of Albert Goldman's hack job.

Elvis changed music, performing, and recording more than any artist in history, became more famous in a shorter time than anyone who ever graced the planet, and detonated the social revolution of the 60s, but that is as nothing to Mason who is hell-bent on finding something that SHE considers significant.

As a result, Elvis becomes a poster boy for a long discourse on southern whites and poverty and, in case that is not significant enough, is magically transformed from The King into The Saint, who performs merely as a device to achieve his true purpose, leading the diversity movement.

It is hard to make Elvis Presley boring, but Mason comes close.

"Elvis Presley," by Bobbie Ann Mason, is an almost too intimate look into the conjectured feelings, rather than the events, shaping the life of "The King of Rock 'n' Roll." I was disappointed by both the writing style, which reminded me of backroom "beauty shop-like" gossip, and the content, which contained psychoanalysis of Presley. The continuous message that the society he was raised in as a child was the blame for the his adult downfall became the focus of the narrative; so much so that it made such a significant contributor to music history and cultural icon seem pathetic and uninteresting. The book is a good study for those interested in counseling or Freudian psychology; however, for those wanting a glimpse into the exciting and flamboyant life of Elvis Presley, this book is not recommended.

This book fits well into the Penguin Lives series - none of them are meant to be definitive pictures of the person being written about, but most of them succeed in giving a good glimpse of a person's life and accomplishments, however, most are over far too quickly and with many details left to further reading. That's not necessarily a bad thing if it's what you're expecting.

This book on Elvis is a WHOOSH WHAT HAPPENED?!?! sort of a quick read. Before I knew it I was turning the final page. Elvis' forty-two years were exhausted in a few hours of reading. The prose is mostly very readable, but early on the author didn't seem to know what to write about Elvis' childhood, so she rhapsodizes on the taste of hamburgers or makes numerous Faulkner references. I almost didn't make it past the first few chapters. Admittedly, there is probably a lack of material on this part of Elvis' life, but that doesn't mean we need a short essay on the lucious taste of hamburgers and how Elvis surely loved them.

Happily, Faulker is never mentioned in subsequent chapters, and the dearth of material vanishes. What follows is a good but all too quick and somewhat one-sided view of the life of Elvis. There is a hint of a 'Poor Elvis' theme as the author continually mentions his "innocence." Even towards the end of his life, when Elvis was literally destroying himself and seemed somewhat nuts, the tone is mostly sympathetic. The author almost blames Elvis' fame more than Elvis himself. It is true that fame can destroy a person. It's happened to too many people (even many who were never famous), but typically there's something else about the person that causes this self-destruction rather than simply the fact that they're famous. Though to be fair, it's a short book so all sides of the story cannot be told.

If you're already versed in the life of Elvis Presley you'll likely find little new information here. I used the book as a starting point. I wanted to know more about Elvis' life, but I wasn't sure to what extent. This book was perfect as a glimpse into what happened to Elvis and the major events of his strange life. As a result of reading this book, I would really like to know more details about his "fall." This book whizzes through his final years by outlining some crazy stories such as Presley's visit with Nixon, his fascination with karate, his bizarre stage shows (to my generation, Elvis' 70's stage shows are strange and almost surreal to watch), the origin of his 70's persona (there's more to it than Captain Marvel), his divorce from Priscilla (good for her!), his becoming a narcotics officer, and his overall increasingly obsessive behavior. There's much more there I'm sure than this book tells, though it's probably not a happy tale, and this book strives to be a happy book.

The book does not mention accusations pointed at Elvis of racism. There are positive quotes from Little Richard, a Black Panthers Leader, and Elvis himself. Right or wrong, many people my age see Elvis as a thief of "black music" and as a symbol of white cultural appropriation and domination. I'm not supporting or denying this view, but the book implicitly takes the stance that this is not an issue or that "everything's okay" on this count. Elvis, along with Sam Phillips, is celebrated as a joiner of the races. This is at best controversial. Nonetheless, the overly positive view the book takes makes me want to learn more about this topic.

The book also goes a little light on Elvis' movies. They are far worse than the book leads on (I've seen all but a couple of them). It's easy to see how his legendary status declined since most people born after Elvis' death experience him first through his movies. It's really very hard to take Elvis seriously when your first exposure to him is "Paradise Hawwaiian Style", "It Happened at The World's Fair", or "Harum Scarum." In the end, his films did far more damage to his name than Elvis could ever imagine. Historically, it's telling that while the Beatles were working on Seargent Pepper, Elvis was working on "Clambake."

The book also doesn't mention what is usually considered Elvis' most critically acclaimed album: "From Elvis in Memphis." Elvis could make some darn good music when he was focused. His music is generally not album-oriented, however, so many of his albums sound merely like collections of songs strung together. "From Elvis in Memphis" is an exception to this, and is enjoyable from beginning to end. It deserves a mention even in a survey.

Overall, the book piqued my interest in Elvis as a cultural icon who took a huge fall for complicated reasons. He is right up there with Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, and Micheal Jackson in terms of the negative impact fame can have on a life. Concerning the topic of Elvis in general, there's more and less of what you'd think involved. He is a tragic figure and a symbol and a warning of the potential destructive powers of fame and wealth.

But if you want to know more details, you'll have to read another book.

I had the overwhelming sense that I had read these stories before, and that they were better the first time. Mason covers a lot of old ground here, and while a few of the stories offer new perspectives, many of them feel like retreads.

The best thing about Zigzagging over her other short story collections is it's more recent: Mason's reliance on up-to-the-minute references make her stories dated (though still excellent).

If you've never read Mason's other collections, give them a look first.

Mason writes about a dozen short stories in this collection. Many of them are about women and all are about people reviewing their lives, the decisions they've made, the people they've loved. The stories are involving -- the kind of story that pulls you in and when you finish the story, look up and are confused as to where you are. But, while I enjoyed many of the stories, there were a few that fell short of the brilliance of the others. Many of the stories rate 4 or 5 stars, the few I didn't enjoy brought the overall rating down for me.

"Zigzagging Down A Wild Trail", by Bobbie Ann Mason is a great collection of short stories. She has a very unique and clever way of seeing what is presented to all of us, but is only viewed by some, and recorded by even fewer. Her stories are not about fantastically unusual events. Her characters are generally people that many will know some version of, and yet when she finishes rendering their personalities they feel as though they are new.

There are 11 stories in the collection, and the titles range from, "Tobrah, Thunder Snow, and Charger". "Tobrah", resides at one end of this range of tales, with a daughter traveling to make arrangements for her father who deserted her, only to find that with his final leaving in death he has also left her a half-sister that is younger by decades. Other than her name the child is largely a mystery, and some clues that develop are less than comforting. This story like many that are in the book are left with unfinished issues, the outcome is for the reader to decide. Many of these tales are brought to a conclusion very abruptly, a style that I usually finally annoying. This was not the case with this writer's work, and it may be because the stories themselves are so rich that even left incomplete, the writer has given her audience all they need.

Well-known events like The Gulf War are also modified so that it is the husband who has stayed behind while his wife has gone off to war. Superficially the story appears to contain much of the cliché male thinking one would expect, but pay attention to the detail, and the story is unique and very well done. The character and title of one story, "Charger", is at times humorous, and at others sad as his and his girlfriend's future are all too predictable. The characters of Charger, who is desirous of readjusting his brain via the use of his girlfriend's aunt's Prozac, is someone you will not forget easily. And his girlfriend who wears skintight snakeskin pants, "Like a pair of Boa Constrictors", and defines happiness as having lipstick on, may be the most interesting characters in the book.

Whatever your interests there is a high probability that Bobbie Ann Mason will provide several stories for you to enjoy.