SOURCE: Krist, Gary. Review of Spence + Lila, by Bobbie Ann Mason. Hudson Review 42, no. 1 (spring 1989): 127–28.

In the following mixed review of Spence + Lila, Krist applauds Mason's writing, but wishes the novel was more satisfying.

[Bobbie Ann Mason's] new short novel Spence + Lila is exactly what we've come to expect of the author of Shiloh, and Other Stories: a simple, straightforward tale of ordinary people in ordinary circumstances, told with extraordinary perception and precision. Like Carver, Mason has a turf, and this book finds her again returning to that area of rural western Kentucky she has already made her own. It's a place where the subtle rhythms of farm life blend seamlessly with the loud shimmying of TV, Burger Kings, and rock-and-roll—an amusingly compromised Arcadia that her characters seem to accept as perfectly natural.

The book begins with Spence and Lila Culpepper, Kentucky farmers passing into old age...