Letters to Annie

            The writing style for Annie on my Mind is written in epistolary, letter writing, tradition. Liza’s is writing these letters to Annie basically stating what she feels; however, she never ends up sending them. Before the letters, we get a perspective of how Annie’s and Liza’s relationship began to shape. We get a better understanding of Liza through her letters to Annie. I enjoy the letters because we get to see and hear what Liza actually thinks about the situation from her heart. The letters add character and emotional strength to the novel. Us as readers can relate to the letters because I bet sometime in our lives we have wrote letters and have never sent them. I know from my own experiences.

            The epistolary style leaves us asking more questions than what we started with. The third perspective view gives us an insight of what happened between the two girls, Annie and Liza. In the beginning of the story, Liza is writing a letter to Annie but knows she is not going to send it. The question I had from the beginning is why she was not going to send it. What happened between the girls? The whole time reading the story, I was wondering if we would ever figure out why the girls do not talk anymore. Even in the end, they do not tell us how the girls ended their senior year or even when the Annie visited Liza out in California. We were asking one question at the beginning; however, after reading the letters and past events, we are left with multiple questions unanswered.

            We get a descriptive description of all the characters besides Liza. On page 4, we get a little description of Liza. It states Liza runs her hand through her short, already tousled short brownish hair; she was shorted than the 5’3”. Liza does not talk about herself; she focuses on the people around her and how they make her feel. In Liza’s letters, we get the emotion description of her because we have sense her thoughts of how Annie and the situation made her feel. On page 8, Liza describes Annie in great detail, “she had very long black hair, round face with a small little-kid’s nose and a sad-looking mouth.” From Liza’s descriptions of Annie in her letters, we know she cares deeply about her and that gives us a deeper connection with both of the characters.

            The letter style is written to Annie during their first year of college away from each other. From the first letter, we get a sense of trouble in the girls’ relationship; therefore, from the beginning it kept the suspense going. Through the letters and going back to the events in their relationship, we had to navigate through their relationship. In the letters, we comprehend how hard and complicated love is. When Liza is trying to remember what happened during her senior year, we understand how unsure someone’s feelings can be. In the end, the readers and Liza realized she did love Annie and want to be with her. There is a lot of emotion packed into the reading that helps us bond with each character.   Throughout the story, I was cheering for both Annie and Liza because I know from past relationship, even though it’s not the same type of relationship, that you can rise about peoples disliking and find what truly makes you happy.