Clear Springs: A Memoir

by Bobbie Ann Mason

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679449256
• ISBN13: 9780679449256
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 298 Pages
• Weight: 1.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful!

Bobbie Ann Mason has done a wonderful job with "Clear Springs". I did not grow up in Kentucky in the baby boom generation, but I did grow up in rural southern Missouri just after it, and this story is so very like what I was familiar with. Ms. Mason is of my mother's generation and except for the disfunction there are many similarities between this story and stories my mother has told. My family reminded me of the older Masons and not the disfunctional Lees. The isolation of rural life, but the joy in many ways that come from it. The curiosity of the outside world, but the fear of it. She relates that Clear Springs hadn't changed much since the Civil War and she was correct in that. The world that slowly evolved for most Americans changed before this rural generation's eyes. A Great book!

The author remembers and revisits her Kentucky home

I'm an appreciative fan of Bobbie Ann Mason's short stories, about rural people raised with traditional values now somewhat at sea in a world of consumerism, pop culture, and a new morality. Young adults, whose parents would have stuck with a marriage come hell or high water, now divorce and drift through relationships. Their parents tied to the land and other life-long occupations, Mason's post-war generation is less rooted, freed of conventional beliefs, but often at a loss about what to believe in. Most striking as America grows increasingly urban, Mason's people continue to inhabit a rural landscape -- more worldly than their forebears, but not more sophisticated.While some readers of Mason's stories and novels may have been puzzled by the point of view in them (ironic? matter of fact? sentimental?), this wonderful memoir should do much to clear up that ambiguity. Here a reader is introduced to the world of day-to-day experience that these narratives have emerged from. And you can begin to see how the matter of fact, ironic, and sentimental blend into a perspective that is distinctly rural American. The strongest individual (who is surely the source of many of Mason's fictional characters) is without doubt her mother, a remarkable woman with a quizzical sense of humor, a colorful manner of speaking, and a long view that comes of witnessing much of the 20th century at first hand.A list of highlights in this book would go on for pages; there's just so much to savor and enjoy. There's Mason's own unsophisticated childhood (barefoot summers, crushes on pop stars, rock and roll fandom), the making of the film "In Country," and the continuing transformation of the rural Kentucky environment from horse-and-buggy days to the invasion of agribusiness -- a huge processing plant has sprung up across the road from the family farm. I recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed Mason's fiction. It is rich with thoughtful and well-observed detail reaching back across three generations of family history.

Take me home

I grew up on a farm in East Tennessee. I could relate to everything Mason wrote about including the Grandmother who controlled so much of their family life. It was a thrill to find this book and Bobbie Ann Mason. Our book club also read the book and echoed many of the sentiments expressed by other readers.

Memories of Bygone Times

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!

CLEAR SPRINGS must be read aloud.

Upon reading CLEAR SPRINGS in my study at home, I found myself calling Evelyn--in another room--to come and listen. I called my 10 year old son and 5 year old daughter to listen. I took the book to my mother's apartment to read certain passages. It is not enough to read this memoir silently; it must be read aloud. Bobbie Ann Mason has mastered the language of this "postage stamp" area of the South, and even outside the marvelous dialogue, she reverts to the cadences of the speech of western Kentucky, not the homogenized speech that we hear in shopping malls today, but the old language with its roots in the old world. After a while I gave up trying to read CLEAR SPRINGS silently. CLEAR SPRINGS must be read aloud.