Annie on my mind

Garden, N. (1982). Annie on my mind. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

Summary: Annie on My Mind, is a wonderful coming of age romance with two high school senior females, Liza and Annie. They go to vastly different schools in New York and meet by chance when Liza hears Annie singing at the museum. They quickly become friends and constantly make-believe they are parts of a story (knights, unicorns). The girls have each struggled to fit in at their own schools and hold tightly to their new friendship. When the friendship begins to blossom into something more, the girls are scared and hesitant but soon are completely in love. However, their relationship takes a turn for the worst when they are found out by the secretary of Liza’s strict private school and she is threatened with expulsion for being a lesbian. The novel starts in the third-person point of view and then continues from Liza's point of view as she tells the story of Annie and herself. It ends again in the third person. Interestingly the sections from the third person represent Liza as more vulnerable than she represents herself in the first person. While in the third person, which occurs in present time, she is at university and perhaps more comfortable with who she is, in the first person point of view, though she knows she is different, she is always trying to fit in.