SOURCE: Jersild, Devon. “The World of Bobbie Ann Mason.” Kenyon Review 11, no. 3 (summer 1989): 163–69.

In the following review, Jersild discusses the characterizations in Spence + Lila and Love Life. Jersild asserts that protagonists in Mason's fiction rely on the physical details of their lives to keep them grounded, but tend to remain disconnected from their feelings.

It was seven years ago, in 1982, that Bobbie Ann Mason published Shiloh, and Other Stories, her first collection of short fiction. Except for some nitpicking reviews which complained that Mason was female, wrote in the present tense, and published in the New Yorker (qualifications apparently comprising a genre), the critical reception of that volume was noisy and positive; critics saw in Mason a newcomer who showed not only promise but also maturity of vision and technique. Since then, she has published two short novels, In Country (1985) and Spence and Lila (1988), and now, a collection...