13th out of 85 books
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914 voters
Angle of Repose
Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life tha...more
Paperback, 569 pages
Published
May 28th 1992
by Penguin
(first published 1971)
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Nov 06, 2012
Steve aka Sckenda
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommended to Steve aka Sckenda by:
Modern Library 100
Retired historian Lyman Ward lives in his grandparents' home in Grass Valley, California. A horrific bone disease consumes him and the ruins of an amputated leg-stump remind him that he is an invalid severed from his family and his past. Lyman hates his ex-wife who cheated on him almost as much as he hates the culture of the sixties, and he must decide whether to accept the ex-wife’s remorseful overtures of reconciliation.
During his confinement surrounded by his grandparents' possessions and pap...more
During his confinement surrounded by his grandparents' possessions and pap...more
As I read this, I thought, "this is about a 4 star read." So why did I give it 5 stars? It is such a beautiful book, that's why. There were many parts that didn't seem to move along, which is why I thought I would be stingy, but I'm so very glad the author took his time. And I felt myself talking to the characters, mostly Susan. "Don't be so removed from your life - how many do you get?" Could I be so involved with a story and not give it 5 stars?
Aug 08, 2008
BT
rated it
2 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Nobody
Recommended to BT by:
Goodreads reviewers
I read this book based largely on the Goodreads reviews. Maybe I'm not as smart as other reviewers, or maybe other reviewers give it high praise because it was a Pulitzer Prize winner and they didn't want to look dumb (something to which I have no aversion), or maybe this was just a fluke, but I didn't think this book was worth reading. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I started the book about 4 or 5 times, and when I finally did slog through it, it was in 5 and 10 page increments. I just coul...more
it doesn't surprise that this book won the pulitzer prize. it's an ambitious novel, cleverly constructed, effectively blending life and fiction, containing some beautiful sentences.
this is the story of lyman ward, a historian who has gone into retirement, afflicted by a bone disease that has resulted in the amputation of his right leg, living alone in the house that was his grandparents, and it is also about his grandmother, susan burling ward, an artist and writer, who moved from the east with...more
this is the story of lyman ward, a historian who has gone into retirement, afflicted by a bone disease that has resulted in the amputation of his right leg, living alone in the house that was his grandparents, and it is also about his grandmother, susan burling ward, an artist and writer, who moved from the east with...more
This is easily one of my favorite novels of the books I've read in the past 5 years. It's lauded as Stegner's masterpiece and I completely agree.
Stegner tells the story of a man who has a disease that is crippling him. He's living in his ancestral home, being taken care of by an old, old, family friend. He's a historian and feels compelled to research his paternal grandmother using the journals and keepsakes that are at the house. Stegner weaves the life story of the grandmother (and grandfathe...more
Stegner tells the story of a man who has a disease that is crippling him. He's living in his ancestral home, being taken care of by an old, old, family friend. He's a historian and feels compelled to research his paternal grandmother using the journals and keepsakes that are at the house. Stegner weaves the life story of the grandmother (and grandfathe...more
I have read this book twice so far. The first time, I was a single college student. The second time, I had been married about five years. I'm sure I will read it again a few more times. And I'm sure that the more years of marriage I've logged, the more I will get out of this book.
Marriage, and what it takes -- and takes out of you -- to make it work is the main theme of this book. Stegner has some profound things to say about it. But even before I could personally relate to the story's main the...more
Marriage, and what it takes -- and takes out of you -- to make it work is the main theme of this book. Stegner has some profound things to say about it. But even before I could personally relate to the story's main the...more
Fiction moves me most when it’s most piercingly honest – when it reveals to me places in my heart that I’ve been afraid to recognize the existence of. Wallace Stegner’s “Angle of Repose” examines the part of us that's reluctant to forgive and that cannot seem to learn how to forget. The book is hauntingly true and ruthlessly introspective and it left me, at times, gasping for breath at the beauty of its lyricism - it could serve well as a master class in honest writing.
Stegner writes from the p...more
Stegner writes from the p...more
The next review is for Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. This was our latest book club read for the month of February. It is a beautifully written, eloquent, descriptive book. It has been highly, highly recommended to me by several people...readers who I respect. Most of them have said that it was the best book they have ever read. Wow! That is saying a lot. This book is a very long and epic tale of a husband and wife who move to the west in the late 1800's to settle. This was good news to me....more
Wow, I really enjoyed reading this book! It was such a sad, sad story and just when you think it couldn't get worse, it did - maybe I enjoy unhappy endings... Nevertheless, Stegner is so deliciously descriptive and Lyman's narration was sometimes amusing and (very) frank.
In some ways I sympathized with Susan and understood how she may have felt leaving a life she loved behind and braving the unknown. I think that's what marriage is in general. (It also helped that she mentioned places like Poug...more
In some ways I sympathized with Susan and understood how she may have felt leaving a life she loved behind and braving the unknown. I think that's what marriage is in general. (It also helped that she mentioned places like Poug...more
Mar 09, 2008
Linda
rated it
2 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
History Lovers who seek depression
Recommended to Linda by:
Pulitzer Prize Novels List
Stegner won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1972 for this book. Goes to show you that you should disregard my reviews! Absolutely no taste, whatsoever. This book took me over two months to read because I kept putting it down. Down being the operative word here. It was not only a "downer", but lacked the skill of a good editor. In today's publishing world, Stegner wouldn't have gotten away with such a ponderous, heavy book. This was written in the "old way," with the author making it apparent t...more
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The characters here seem hopeful in the beginning, ready to find success in the American West as well as their own lives at the end of the 19th century. Stegner captures the slow seep of hope away from them in a way that's probably realistic for many who start out life with plans and time, but watch them both fall away. At nearly 600 pages, it still feels a little unfinished and maybe a little unsatisfying. I found the narrator and his grandmother to be just a little annoying at times, but it ma...more
This was Wallace Stegner's masterpiece and that it is! One of my all-time favorites. His prose is flawless. A story about settling the American West from the view of Susan Ward through her letters, which are actually those of Mary Hallock Foote, one of the finest illustrators of the 19th century. Read and read again.
To all that's been written about this beautiful book, I can only add that it's as much about coming to peace as it is about coming of age. All of us are haunted — by personal demons, by shared pasts, by families, regrets, mistakes, failings, and the myriad vagaries of life and living. But we're all and only human. It's life's work to come to terms with what's been given us, to play the hands dealt us, and to come to peace with the work we've done and are doing on the journey. Reminding of us of...more
Stegner is almost unheard of outside the U.S, and even in his home country he seems to remain at the periphery of the collective literary consciousness. For the life of me I cannot work out why. Apparently, even after winning the Pulitzer, the New York Times refused to review this novel.
The first point to note about Stegner is that he is a master of prose, a craftsman of great skill and control. Reading his work is a pleasure, pure and simple. There is perhaps something of the lyrical, or the R...more
A capable introspection into the lives/marriages of three generations of an American family spanning a century (1870s to 1970s); namely Susan and Oliver Ward (grandparents), Lyman Ward (storyteller and grandson) and his wife Ellen Ward (a minor character), and Rodman Ward (Lyman's son). The story focuses principally on Susan Ward, her Eastern upbringing and her transplantation into the "wild" West through her erstwhile marriage to Oliver Ward (a mining engineer). The author contrasts the Victori...more
I thought I was going to hate this book, and for the first few chapters I did. I had a hard time with the present-day sections of the book. Even right after I finished the book, I wasn't quite sure how much I liked it.
In the weeks after I read the book I just couldn't stop thinking about it. Really, I think that Stegner gives us the most accurate and thought-provoking portrayal of the modern woman that I have seen out of a male writer.
The main character in this book is essentially a working moth...more
In the weeks after I read the book I just couldn't stop thinking about it. Really, I think that Stegner gives us the most accurate and thought-provoking portrayal of the modern woman that I have seen out of a male writer.
The main character in this book is essentially a working moth...more
I really waffled about whether or not I liked this book, or whether it drove me crazy.
On one hand, the prose is impeccable. Tasty. Delicious. Crisp, and smooth, and elegant (like a cameo) all at the same time. It was certainly easy to picture each setting (even the one near me, Leadville!) with fresh eyes, seeing the country in un-developed splendor. It's the kind of writing that until you read it, you don't realize how much contemporary fiction is missing. The story is unique -- not your typic...more
On one hand, the prose is impeccable. Tasty. Delicious. Crisp, and smooth, and elegant (like a cameo) all at the same time. It was certainly easy to picture each setting (even the one near me, Leadville!) with fresh eyes, seeing the country in un-developed splendor. It's the kind of writing that until you read it, you don't realize how much contemporary fiction is missing. The story is unique -- not your typic...more
Three or four years ago I read where somebody thought Angle of Repose was probably the greatest American novel of the 20th century. That bothered me, because I'd never heard of it. I bought a copy, got about 100 pages into it, and bogged down.
I'm proud to say I've finally read it all (parts of it several times). It is indeed a great novel, and more ambitious than some of the others one might think of as the best. But I'm giving it only four stars because of the length and the sustained effort re...more
I'm proud to say I've finally read it all (parts of it several times). It is indeed a great novel, and more ambitious than some of the others one might think of as the best. But I'm giving it only four stars because of the length and the sustained effort re...more
Jul 18, 2008
Lori
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
anyone
Recommended to Lori by:
Allegra Hakim
Shelves:
my-all-time-favorite-books
A poetic story with rich prose and thought provoking metaphors.....perfect for Book Club discussion. It's on my all time favorite book list. I was amazed at the author's attention to details with such accuracy and percision from the historical Western frontier life down to the very flowers in bloom. This book is a treasure.
The marriage between Oliver and Susan Ward was filled with adversity, love, disappointments, devotion, temptation, and tragedy. Both characters were morally exceptional people...more
The marriage between Oliver and Susan Ward was filled with adversity, love, disappointments, devotion, temptation, and tragedy. Both characters were morally exceptional people...more
Such a complex (though readable) novel with so many themes that it's hard to know where to start. The wheelchair-bound narrator tells us this is a story of a marriage (that of his grandparents whom he knew until their deaths at advanced ages), but it's also the story of his wondering at his own (failed) marriage and why his wife left him when she did. Is he escaping into his grandmother's life to escape his own, or is he doing so to figure his own life out? The path to his insights is long (as i...more
I just finished a wonderful short story by Alice Munro in the most recent New Yorker. And the first adjective that occurred to me about Angle of Repose was one it shared with the Munro story, patience. There is no hurry and no waste in either work. Lyman Ward, one of two main characters in Angle of Repose, a novel rich in characters—the other main character is Ward’s grandmother Susan Burling Ward—is in late middle-age with a failing body and a distressed life. His wife is gone. One of his legs...more
I loved this book even more the second time around. In my opinion, this is the perfect novel. I don't have the expertise to identify the exact narration technique, but to have the narrator, Lyman Ward, not only share his beloved grandparent's 100 year-old history from his 20th century perch, providing both redemptive hindsight and worrisome foreshadowing when needed, but also his own story as an amputee with a debilitating bone disease bitterly protecting his lonely independence, furnishing the...more
This is a wonderful novel about a marriage in the late 1800S. The wife's career, and indeed her entire life is--surprise!--subordinated to her husband's. These two people couldn't be more unlike: she very "refined" from a cultured eastern background, a writer and an artist; the husband an extrememly talented but impractical engineer who has great difficulty expressing his feelings or innermost thoughts. Although I don't usually like books with a western setting, "Angle of Repose" presents a fasc...more
At the time I read Angle of Repose, I was reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy, who has a profoundly different view of the West than Stegner does. So by contrast, Angle of Repose, the story of a disabled and dying historian chronicling his great-grandparents' marriage amidst ore mines and pioneer camps, seemed somehow hollow and false. It took a few months before I was able to appreciate it on its own merits.
It's cliche to say that the characters come alive, but I can't think of any other way to des...more
It's cliche to say that the characters come alive, but I can't think of any other way to des...more
I read this book for a book club and I will be forever grateful to the person who introduced it to me. This is also one of the top 3 books I have ever read.
Angle of Repose follows Lyman Ward's historical research into the lives of his great-grandparents. His great-grandmother had been an educated, genteel Eastern woman and his great-grandfather a rough engineer, who brings her out to build up the American West in the 1800's. The descriptions of the places they lived and what they had to do are...more
Angle of Repose follows Lyman Ward's historical research into the lives of his great-grandparents. His great-grandmother had been an educated, genteel Eastern woman and his great-grandfather a rough engineer, who brings her out to build up the American West in the 1800's. The descriptions of the places they lived and what they had to do are...more
i give it two stars for the gentle, thorough, and consistently engaging prose, which drew me in despite my growing qualms about the book as i read. (although i should note that this praise doesn't hold for the final chapter, which felt like an incongruous cop-out). stegner explores the potentially fascinating intersections of several themes--manifest destiny, history, individualism, pride and gender roles, to name a few--but he does so with the painfully dated social conservatism of his narrator...more
Jun 07, 2008
Kirsten
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
soulful humorists
Recommended to Kirsten by:
very dear friends
This book. This book has altered the course of my reading tendencies. It pretends to be plainspoken but it is supremely eloquent. The plot description is deceptively talk-show-esque, but the story is bracing. I might even be so bold as to say it is the least pretentious work of literary fiction ever to have consumed my attention.
It's difficult not to sound like an over-zealous book jacket blurb when I try to explain what I liked most about Angle of Repose. It provides a subtle depiction of the...more
It's difficult not to sound like an over-zealous book jacket blurb when I try to explain what I liked most about Angle of Repose. It provides a subtle depiction of the...more
This book was recommended to me by two friends, so although I considered putting it down a few times, I plodded along. Although the last chapter was bizarre, it was worth the 569 pages to experience Wallace Stegner’s writing. I enjoyed Lyman Ward as a character immensely. His cynical narrative was the highlight of the story. At times, I worried that Susan Burling Ward’s use of the Quaker “thee” was going to make me run screaming out of the library, but I managed to control myself. I wouldn't rea...more
I read this book in high school, so it is definitely past-due for a reread. However, it's stuck with me, and I still find myself thinking about it. At the end, I remember desperately turning the pages that were blank, contained a biography of the author, and advertized the new and exiting titles by the publisher, hoping for an extra chapter, an epilogue, or a promise of a sequel. I really never wanted it to end, and I still wish it hadn't. More than worthy of a read and a re-read, especially if...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wallace Stegner: Is he brilliant, or what? | 2 | 18 | May 13, 2013 06:17pm | |
| What are "cannibal tracks" ? | 5 | 42 | Jan 30, 2013 11:02pm | |
| What caused the demise of Susan's respect for Oliver? | 16 | 65 | Dec 30, 2012 05:55pm | |
| Tackling the Puli...: Angle of Repose (Wallace Stegner, 1972) | 22 | 52 | Sep 02, 2012 07:18pm |
Wallace Earle Stegner (February 18, 1909—April 13, 1993) was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist. Some call him "The Dean of Western Writers."
More about Wallace Stegner...
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“Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.”
—
66 people liked it
“Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.”
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