F/F Friday: Annie on My Mind

[osprey_archer]

Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind, published in 1982, is one of the earliest YA novels to have a sympathetic portrayal of a lesbian romance, which even ends happily! Without too much egregious sufferings on the parts of the heroines, either! They’ve agreed to meet again after not seeing each other for a few months, and you can tell they’re going to make it work.

I liked it. I didn’t love it: it does that thing I find annoying in romance novels (well, any novel really) where the book tells you that the characters had an interesting conversation - there’s one instance here where Liza says something like “and then Annie and I talked about mortality for a while” - but we don’t get the conversation.

I realize that not everyone wants a good rousing discussion of the inevitability of death getting in the way of their romance, but I super do. I mean, it doesn’t have to be mortality, but if I’m going to get invested in characters then I need to see them talking about something, you know?

But it is extremely sweet. I enjoyed the fun that Liza and Annie have playing goofy imaginative games together, like just after they meet when they pretend to be knights and have a duel in the medieval hall of a museum.

There’s also what amounts to a lesbian reading list in here, which must have been incredibly useful for gay teens in the pre-internet days when it would have been harder to look that up.

Comments

[sovay]

There’s also what amounts to a lesbian reading list in here, which must have been incredibly useful for gay teens in the pre-internet days when it would have been harder to look that up.

What's on it? I have heard of, but not read this novel.

[osprey_archer]

Unfortunately I didn't write it down, so the only one I remember is Patience and Sarah. The others are just mentioned once.

[slashmarks]

This was the first lesbian book I read, back when I was thirteen or so and had realized I was gay recently; I remember that was when I put Patience and Sarah on my reading list, where it stayed for the next ten years. (I finally found and read it last month.)

I haven't reread this one for a while but I keep meaning to; I remember liking it very much, but finding Liz's inability to write to Annie completely inexplicable as a teenager. It makes more sense to me now.

[osprey_archer]

It can be so hard to find older books. So frustrating! But also so rewarding when the search does finally pay off.

I found Liza's inability to write to Annie frustrating too, but in an understandable way. Clearly she needed to work through her feelings about their relationship (and especially what happened to Miss Widmer and Miss Stevenson) before she could contact Annie, but at the same time, poor Annie faithfully writing and hearing nothing and wondering if Liza hated her now...

[rachelmanija]

The thing where the authors says something interesting happened and then doesn't show it drives me batty too. I also want to hear their actual conversation about mortality!

[osprey_archer]

It just seems like such a waste. Especially when the conversation is about something like mortality, where everyone has an opinion - it's not like the author needed to do a bunch of research so the characters could have an in-depth discussion about the finer points of nuclear physics.