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Angle of Repose

4.25 of 5 stars 4.25 · rating details · 22,044 ratings · 2,270 reviews

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

Shelves: favorites-contemporary, modern-library-100, marriage, western, pulitzer-prize, favorites, pulitzer-prize-author, american-literature

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

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Jan 09, 2010 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 5-star-reads, pulitzer, stegner-wallace

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?

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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

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Feb 11, 2012 Maureen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

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 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 her engineer husband, oliver, to the western frontier. we are shunted back and forth in time, from lyman in his present (1970), to the depiction of susan's life in a biography he is creating about her, and also to her letters to her first love and best friend, augusta (drake) hudson.

it behooves me to acknowledge that stegner did not write the wonderful letters between susan and augusta. with names and other personal details changed, these are in fact real letters written to helen (dekay) gilder, the source material for the novel he alludes to in the acknowledgement at the beginning, some of which were published as A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote. between the disclaimer and how i felt when reading these letters, i thought they didn't seem his, and on doing a quick web search discovered the existence of mrs. foote. The basic details seem to be these: stegner asked for permission to use the letters, was given permission by family members, except that one planned to publish the letters in their entirety, and so did not want him to publicly acknowledge them. the disclaimer at the beginning of the novel was hit upon, but people later said he was wrong to use them wholesale without proper credit, and that, furthermore, he had defamed the character of mrs. foote when his fictionalization diverged from her true life. as far at that goes, i can see no difficulty with the second point: he quite plainly states he is using this life as a model for his story, that is not a "family history". as to the first? well, that one's a little tougher. ideally he would have recreated the letters, or referenced them but it doesn't appear to me that this was done maliciously, but only to accede to the wishes of the heirs. as it stands, i think their use only underscores the feat of engineering that is this novel's construction, as they serve as the backbone to the two imagined tales refracted from them to the stories of lyman and his grandmother.

the three narrative ropes are braided together masterfully and the echoes of the grandmother he depicts are often found in his perspective of his own time. lyman sees no joy in his future and is determined to cast his eyes back to the past, to the story of his grandparents, to blot out his own life. when he returns us to his grandparents' story, each time i am grateful to be away from him, from his pain and frustration, because despite the anxieties in the life of susan and oliver, these accounts are expansive, gorgeous at times, describing the places and adventures and misadventures of their search for a place where both of them can find balance, that angle of repose that gives the book its title.

why only three stars? admittedly, there is a lot to admire in this book but as beautifully constructed as it is, i felt removed from the characters. i do not say that they weren't well drawn, or that i didn't like any of them (oliver ward is the best of these people -- and it's clear that stegner wants you to know it) but i felt they kept me out, and that lyman (and stegner's) admiration for the stoic, and emotionally distant kept me from fully embracing them. in that respect, i feel it is a very WASP-y novel, and these books always seem to leave me on the outside looking in.

things that really irritated me:

- lyman's repeated use of the german phrase "ohne bustenhalter" when talking about shelley, the daughter of his caregiver ada, and short-term secretary. i get it: lyman's inhibited sexuality clashes with the free-wheeling era in which he currently lives, and it's probably easier for him to fixate on a woman's braless breasts in another language. maybe i am echoing shelley's part in questioning the biography he is writing for its sexual inhibition as i chafe against this phrase. maybe stegner wants to piss me off with this, i don't know.

- the ending of lyman's story. i do not find fault with the final paragraph, but the events immediately preceding it. what serves as the climax seems an impatient clutching of loose ends fashioned into a rough knot. i know the novel is long but this seemed like a cop out.

what i really liked best about this book were all the questions i ended up having; there is so much to consider in the fact of it, the overlap, the deconstruction of its fiction and realism: how the letters drove the book in fiction and in life; how shelley questions lyman's book as it unfolds inside the book i was reading; how much of any life has its truth revealed to anyone outside of that person's private thoughts. while i resist the ending, i accept the sum of its parts, and the reflection of the writer's craft that is perhaps its greatest revelation. (less)

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Mar 27, 2007 Joy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Apr 09, 2008 Beth rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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Apr 26, 2012 Scott Axsom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

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

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Feb 28, 2008 Kristin rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

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Feb 10, 2008 Julie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: faves-to-re-read

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

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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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Jul 02, 2007 Trin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, american-lit

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 18, 2007 Erica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

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

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Jul 10, 2011 Bobbi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction-west, pulitzer, five-stars

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.

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Feb 23, 2013 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Apr 19, 2013 Jonathan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, still-looking-for-signed-or-first, worshiped-and-adored

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
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 Romantic, in his evocation of landscape and his love of the West but it never becomes overbearing. It is realism, of course, and (as unfashionable as that remains) is almost defiantly un-postmodern.

Nevertheless, the novel’s structure is interestingly complex. The narrator, a retired historian suffering from degenerative arthritis, attempts to distract himself from the unpleasantness of his present by writing a biography of his grandparents. This second level of narrative takes up the majority of the book and is drawn from the real life accounts of Arthur and Mary Hallock Foote. Indeed, some of Mary’s letters appear unedited in the text (totally unfounded and idiotic plagiarism accusations were made against Stegner, but he is always clear about his sources and his desire to create a fictional novel from such historical detritus).

Susan Burling, the narrator’s grandmother and focus of the novel, is a displaced, educated woman from the East coast who falls in love with an idealistic engineer seeking his fortune in the West. The conflict between the Idea and the Real, the imagined West and the brutal, tedious, dirty reality of frontier life, makes for a dynamic and dramatic narrative.

It is also a book about love, about what a marriage can mean, about betrayal and forgiveness and the stumbling truths of our lives. It is also, at times, simply beautiful.

“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.”

This was the first of his I read, and led me to read pretty much everything else he has written. I would not hesitate to recommend every single one of them. He is a true American master of the novel and deserves recognition as such.
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Mar 13, 2012 Craig rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

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

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Nov 13, 2010 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

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Jun 08, 2012 Meg rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: via-audible, how-the-west-was-won

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 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 typical prarie romance

On another hand, I found the narrator to be (at some moments) rather annoying. He talked about 'feminine fingers' messing in his 'guts', and gave no legitimacy to women's feelings, really. He had given a 'good life' (no matter that he had been silent, distracted, and unemotional in his marriage) to his first wife, and couldn't understand why she'd left. He completely dismissed a twenty-year old girl's thoughts with no more than a pat on the head, because she was a girl, and because no one 'now a days' could have any idea worth discussing. I think he was a marvelous character in general, but he rankled me with his narrowmindedness. He also charmed me with his love of the past, and his love of social morees, social propriety, and gentlemanliness. So there you have it.

SBW, the main character in this book was by turns charming, snobbish, unhappy, and boring. The book chugged along with disappointment after disappointment, but I suppose that's an accurate picture of life back then for some. I kept waiting for them to 'catch a break'. The ending was marvelously revealed... it was a book where I couldn't 100% exactly tell what was goign to happen until the very end. And annoying that every man she came across was madly in love with her, but whatever.

I loved side characters in this book almost more than the main characters (which was more like watching a train wreck anyhow).

All in all, I'm glad I read it. It was a test in patience, but I think the pay offs were worth the journey.(less)

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Aug 25, 2008 Stephen Gallup rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 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 required to get through it. Maybe this is my failing, but it's harder going than anything else I've read in a good while.

On the surface, it's the story of a crusty old guy, crippled both by amputation and bone disease, who chooses to piece together the story of his grandmother's life rather than think about the horrific "slow petrifaction" of his own body or other issues such as problems with his grown son and the wife who deserted him and who now seems to regret that. The grandmother takes center stage more than half the time, expressing her hopes and fears eloquently through letters she wrote throughout her life. When there are gaps, our historian steps in gracefully to recreate scenes as needed -- or to explain why he chooses to hold a few at arms' length.

I think what makes the novel significant is not the jarring comparisons of American life in the early 1970s with the way people lived 100 years earlier, nor is it the frequent migrations back and forth from the cultured East Coast to rough mining camps in the West, although both add. What's most important is the theme, hammered home constantly, that "home is a notion that only the nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend." To live in a place that is "safe, enduring, and right" is the best thing one could hope for. But unfortunately for the grandmother, again and again she found herself uprooted and moving as her husband sought ever more hopeless opportunities. "This is not our real home," she wrote in one letter. "We do not belong here except as circumstances keep us." She knew what she had lost. We're told, "Grandmother wanted her son to grow up, as she had, knowing some loved place down to the last woodchuck hole." The narrator looks at zany modern life, in which "places are interchangeable," and says, "I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to?"

There is much more, too, concerning for example issues like forgiveness (his physical rigidity is a metaphor). And at times the writing is graced with lovely analogies:

"The tape recorder whirring no more noisily than electrified time..."

"Rodman's face came into focus, framed in the door's small pane like the face of a fish staring in the visor of a diver's helmet, a bearded fish that smiled, distorted by the beveled glass, and flapped a vigorous fin."

"She came in like a reserve quarterback hot to prove the injustice of being kept out of the game."

And the examples go on and on. Do read it if you have some patience and an interest in how life changes and yet stays the same over the decades.(less)

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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

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Mar 26, 2008 Teresa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Feb 16, 2008 Rick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

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 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 is gone to a bone disease that has also left his head incapable of turning. A retired historian, he retreats to his ancestral home in Grass Valley, California, and begins researching his grandmother’s life. Perhaps for a book, perhaps not. As a result two parallel stories unfold, though the contemporary one (contemporary to 1970) more guardedly and briefly, his grandmother’s journey from a young, middle class New York woman dedicated to the arts and literature to the wife of a struggling engineer in the West. The novel’s setting shifts from Brooklyn, New York, to California, Colorado, Mexico, Utah in the 1870s to 1890s and Stegner handles each with the same sharp skill that he handles the various levels of characters, Susan’s husband, her friend Augusta, who you feel you know even though mostly she is seen, as is her husband Thomas Hudson, through the letters Susan sends her, Frank, the conflicted friend to Susan and her husband, Pricey, and all the others of the 19th century West, as well as Shelly, the buxom flower-child who helps Lyman with his research, Al Sutton, and Lyman's caretaker, Ada Hawkes. Lyman Ward follows the arc of his grandmother’s life and the complex relationship that is her marriage, the erosion that time and failure perform, and how the values of the times impact responses to crises. Lyman watches his grandmother’s story come together, helped by his skill as an historian and his own reconstructions, as he must deal with his own unsettled situation. It’s a beautifully wrought novel, moving, compelling, and humane. Stegner writes with a strong narrative and descriptive voice that doesn’t fuss with either but allows them the space they need to impose themselves on the reader’s imagination with conviction. The easy comparison is to Ansel Adams’s photography. “My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandmother’s side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins, or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings.” This comes in the book’s first pages. Somewhere near the end comes this: “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.” In the end, however, even where there are betrayals, you believe that for Lyman Ward it comes down to that fact that after all is said and done we cannot afford all these abandonings. A great novel.(less)

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Sep 02, 2011 Lucy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: every single person who breathes

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 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 relevance and motive, is brilliant. I know many other authors must also do this. It's probably considered common by those in the know within the world of literature. However, I read a lot of novels and I can't think of a single book I've ever read that has done it better than Wallace Stegner in Angle of Repose.

Angle of Repose dramatizes the life of Susan Burling Ward, a talented illustrator raised in an Eastern Quaker home, and her marriage to Oliver Ward, a kind, intelligent but tragically unlucky engineer trying to make a name for himself in the West. Through Susan and Oliver's first fourteen years together, the reader travels to mining camps in California, Colorado and Mexico, and eventually to pre-Statehood Idaho, painting an absolute masterpiece of American West history. Although Lyman Ward is a fictional character in a fictional novel, his passionate defense of the importance of history, could and should be well quoted by actual scholars in the field. Even his short but wonderfully persuadable argument against communal economics and relationships should be studied. They are that profound.

But, as the narrator states, this is really a story about marriage. What allows certain couples, who universally tumble down life's uncertain slope together, to reach a point where the tumbling stops? For rocks and debris in the engineering realm, it's called the angle of repose. There is an eventual stillness, for good or for bad, when the motion or hurt or progress or momentum stops. Perhaps it is balance and harmony. Or, perhaps it is staleness, stubbornness and unrelenting grudges. I'm sure the meaning of "angle of repose" could be presented either way. I lean towards the calm, comfortable stability definition but maybe the stationary rocks aren't content with their quiet.

I hope to return to this novel again and again. It's not a happy one. In many ways, there is a melancholy post-reading that I still can't shake. But, there is also a beauty in words, thoughts and vivid description that makes me clap for joy. I love this book. (less)

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Jun 25, 2008 Gail rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone

Shelves: 2008, classic-american

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

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Jan 18, 2008 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

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Feb 07, 2008 Casandria rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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May 30, 2008 Emma rated it 2 of 5 stars

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

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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

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Jan 11, 2009 Sande rated it 4 of 5 stars

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

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May 11, 2007 Claire rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-it-now

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

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About Wallace Stegner

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."

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Books by Wallace Stegner

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West

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Quotes from Angle of Repose

“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.” — 62 people liked it

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