Angle Of Repose Part 1 Of 2
by Wallace Stegner
|
|
| published
|
1996
by Books on Tape, Inc.
|
| first published
| 1971 |
| binding
| Audio Cassette |
| isbn
|
0736632816
(isbn13: 9780736632812)
|
| literary awards
| Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1972) |
| date added
|
11-13-06
|
|
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Read in February, 2008
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...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
Read in June, 2008
recommended to Patricia by:
Joan Clissold
recommends it for:
My husband so we can talk about it at length!
This book is beautifully written and thought provoking... as I have come to expect from Stegner. Lyman Ward is writting a biography of his grandmother, specifically of her marriage. His grandparents' marriage parallels his own. And he is searching for the meaning of the phrase "angle of repose". However, Lyman Wards future is yet unwritten and his grandparents have long since passed on. We observe Lyman trying to learn more about himself, through his study of the past.
One major th...more
This book is beautifully written and thought provoking... as I have come to expect from Stegner. Lyman Ward is writting a biography of his grandmother, specifically of her marriage. His grandparents' marriage parallels his own. And he is searching for the meaning of the phrase "angle of repose". However, Lyman Wards future is yet unwritten and his grandparents have long since passed on. We observe Lyman trying to learn more about himself, through his study of the past.
One major theme in the book is that history must be presented as it was and then seperately judged for ourselves. The theme is stated plainly several times thorughout the novel. In the meantime, Stegner presents the Story of Susan Burling Ward. He presents her with both her strengths and weaknesses. In the beginning I didn't relate to her... I found her snobbery insufferable. But as the novel pregressed and her character developed, I saw her as a survivor on the western fronteir, and I couldn't help but wish the best for her, ans I began to understand her circumstances better. While she committed many greavences in the book, her story teaches the reader about compassion and understnading. If I had judged her solely on the first 35 pages of the book, would my assesment have been fair? This is an interesting commentary on life, and raises and important question. Is it ever fair to judge another human being?
There were many thought provoking themes but what rang most clearly with me was the question of judgement. Lyman Ward loved his grandparents, how then should he react to their circumstances, and more importantly his own.
It is emotionally difficult to read about people who are ignoring life's warning signs, like the girl in the horror movie who goes into the basement alone. It is easy to echo the frustration of Lyman Ward... no matter how much we shout Susan cannot hear us. We are only left with the chance to learn from her situation.
I probably would have given it five stars except that I already read Stegners "Crossing to Safety"... so the intial awe in his writing style has warn off a bit. And I just can't bring myself to give five stars to a "fall from grace". I would write much more but my son is defacing my copy of Oscar Wildes' "Picture of Dorian Gray". ...less
bookshelves:
family,
fiction
Read in January, 2007
Strange history with this book. I bought at a USC used book sale for $0.25 because it was a "classic" and it has gathered dust for more than twenty years unread. For no special reason I finally get around to taking it down. It was as though our time had finally arrived. The story of Susan Burling Ward is told through the eyes of her grandson, Lyman Ward. Lyman is a retired and disabled historian who, after achieving a measure of success and fame, decides to spend his last years turni...more
Strange history with this book. I bought at a USC used book sale for $0.25 because it was a "classic" and it has gathered dust for more than twenty years unread. For no special reason I finally get around to taking it down. It was as though our time had finally arrived. The story of Susan Burling Ward is told through the eyes of her grandson, Lyman Ward. Lyman is a retired and disabled historian who, after achieving a measure of success and fame, decides to spend his last years turning his eyes to his family.
Angle of Repose is a book that starts off quietly. It was difficult for me to fully engage at first. This is largely because Lyman is such an obnoxious character. He is bitter about his wife's abandonment, angry at his son, and enraged at the new generation. As much as Susan is interesting from the start, Lyman's interest in her is suspicious. As a reader, I suspected that he turned to the past in order to run away from the present.
Gradually and invisibly, the book grew on me. The first 100 pages or so went very slowly. By the end of the book, I had started reading compulsively without even realizing it. Of course, Lyman Ward's interest in and narration of his grandmother is suspicious. All the more so when you learn more about the parallels between his own personal history and her life. That small hint of unreliability makes the narration somehow that much more poignant.
The best part of the book, for me, was the way that Stegner describes and narrates the young American West. In a remark to a journalist in 1981, Stegner said: "The West does not need to explore its myths much further; it has already relied on them too long." This book does its own bit towards deconstructing those myths. The West was not cowboys and outlaws, but miners and claim jumpers instead. It is a quiet look at our country-- oddly calm. I really appreciated it, and believed in the picture that he drew.
Angle of Repose may not have been one of my favorite books that I read in 2007. Still, it was a quiet and smart book-- well worth the effort that it took to read....less
Read in February, 2007
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
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. I love long, fat, epic, historical fiction...and it was. It is told through the research of the this couple's grandson, Lyman Ward, a historian, who is now in his fifties and handicapped. He begins to research his grandmother's life for a book he is writing. A lot of the story is told through letters that were sent between his grandmother, Susan, and her best friend, Augusta. It is a story of the marriage of Susan and Oliver and the hardships, joys, and disappointments they experienced with a backdrop of the scenic west...California, Mexico, Colorado, and Idaho.
This is a Pulitzer Prize winning book. The writing is beyond beautiful. Stegner reminds me a bit of Steinbeck. I really liked this book...was it the best book I have ever read? No. But it was certainly one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. I love the way the story unfolds...letters, documents, flipping time periods (the late 1800's and the 1970's). Stegner doesn't sugar coat the characters. They aren't larger than life. They are human and not always sympathetic. I found myself disliking Lyman, Susan, and Oliver at different times thorough out the book but I grew to care about each of them.
I rate this as Excellent for the writing alone. I was a bit disappointed with the ending. I felt like I had invested a lot and was some what let down and wanted to know more but that would've added another 500 pages to the book!!
...less
Read in June, 2007
recommended to Annalisa by:
Jordan
When I started this book, I was drawn in by the poetic writing style, but not Lyman's story. But once the tale weaved into the grandma's, I was hooked. I didn't worry about where the story was taking me or why, I just jumped into Susan's life and mind. I related so much because Oliver's personality is so much like Brett's: hard-working, good to the core to the point of vulnerability, stubborn, and clam-like in confrontation. I call it the puppy dog effect where you are upset about a misdeed, but...more
When I started this book, I was drawn in by the poetic writing style, but not Lyman's story. But once the tale weaved into the grandma's, I was hooked. I didn't worry about where the story was taking me or why, I just jumped into Susan's life and mind. I related so much because Oliver's personality is so much like Brett's: hard-working, good to the core to the point of vulnerability, stubborn, and clam-like in confrontation. I call it the puppy dog effect where you are upset about a misdeed, but if you confront them you feel the villain for hurting them with their sad puppy faces. Susan the artistic one trying to hold onto a semblance of herself and taking for granted his small deeds of kindness. Maybe it wasn't the similarities but the picturesque writing that drew me in. At any rate, I was engrossed.
This is the story of Susan's and Oliver's life, marriage, love, from the perspective of their historian grandson who pieces it back together through letters and historical facts. Just as you become engrossed in the story, Stegner pulls you back into Lyman's as he discusses where he found the information or why he doesn't have more.
Though it is not a quick read, it is worth the time you invest in their lives. It left me thinking about older married couples having the same old fights that seem ridiculous, but there is so much welding to one another's personality that their marriage becomes a personality of its own. It left me thinking about what it would take it my life to make me lie down and give up and the times I have conceded to my worst fears only to turn back fervently against them and fight. But most of all, it left me wanting to fight for a marriage that constantly grows and regenerates and doesn't stagnate to a safe emotional distance....less
Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
Jamie, Ellen
This is the second time I read this novel. Our book club will be discussing it today, and I want it to be fresh in my mind. I love Wallace Stegner's descriptions! It makes me want to visit the west and just look, listen and experience the landscape. I liked the way he intermingled the narrator's story with that of his grandmother. Hers was an interesting story. She was not the "typical" pioneer wife as she used her talents to help to support her family. And I have to admit I fel...more
This is the second time I read this novel. Our book club will be discussing it today, and I want it to be fresh in my mind. I love Wallace Stegner's descriptions! It makes me want to visit the west and just look, listen and experience the landscape. I liked the way he intermingled the narrator's story with that of his grandmother. Hers was an interesting story. She was not the "typical" pioneer wife as she used her talents to help to support her family. And I have to admit I felt that she was kind of a snob. She had a lot of wonderful qualities, but she always seemed to feel that her husband was "beneath" her East Coast friends.
In re-reading the book I picked up some things I had not seen the first time, such as the two little girls reading "The Birds' Christmas Carol" in the hammock. I think, after reading the book to the end, it's obvious why he chose that title.
It was also obvious that this was written in 1970. The character of Shelly was such a stereotypical 60's young woman, and the generation gap that existed between her and Lyman Ward was straight out of that era. In 1970, I was about Shelly's age and my parents were the age of Lyman Ward, so I could really identify with that relationship.
And yet, along with the generation gap, there is also the sameness to men, women and relationships over years, centuries and generations. Stegner wrapped that up nicely in the end.
Great book! I will have to read some of his others. By the way, Goodreads Friends, I have a copy of the book if either of you wants to borrow it....less
Read in August, 1998
I listened on audiotape to this book about ten years ago and it remains in my memory one of the classics of literature. For now, I hope you will look up Rick's review on this site for a beautiful analysis. I really can't improve on his writing.
"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 imaginati...more
I listened on audiotape to this book about ten years ago and it remains in my memory one of the classics of literature. For now, I hope you will look up Rick's review on this site for a beautiful analysis. I really can't improve on his writing.
"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."
The novel was transformed into a modern opera (which I haven't seen), but it has the power -- someday I hope to see and hear it.
...less
Read in February, 2008
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 Po...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 Pougkeepsie and Dutchess County, NY, where I grew up and dearly miss!) I'm not saying that my husband led me off to western mining camps or that I moved in elite society in NY - far from it! I grew up with a cornfield around my house! I just think that marriage and motherhood require former lives or dreams to be left behind.
I couldn't always agree with Susan though - she may have looked like a "captive, bound and masked" to Mexican passers-by, but like Lyman said, "in a way, we deserve the people we marry." And "wisdom is knowing what you have to accept" - so suck it up, basically. One thing I did agree with Susan though was that she wanted her "son to grow up, as she had, knowing some loved place down to the last woodchuck hole." I can't think of anything better that knowing a place to call "home"....less
This was Stegner's Pulitzer Prize winner and a marvelous book. His ability to surprise you with unexpected characters in even more unexpected settings is alway remarkable. This one, with its two story lines, one current and one half a century preceding, is full of beautiful, ugly, inventive, sturdy characters, and is always involving.
Like many of his books, his lead characters are crusty old men placed in situations that place them entirely outside their comfort zone. But the power to con...more
This was Stegner's Pulitzer Prize winner and a marvelous book. His ability to surprise you with unexpected characters in even more unexpected settings is alway remarkable. This one, with its two story lines, one current and one half a century preceding, is full of beautiful, ugly, inventive, sturdy characters, and is always involving.
Like many of his books, his lead characters are crusty old men placed in situations that place them entirely outside their comfort zone. But the power to connect, both for the unlikely characters, and for you as the reader, is always present in Stegner's novels, none in greater strength than this book. The "angle of repose" is a geological term that refers to the stopping place of, say a pebble, falling from the top of a peak. It is a perfect, perfect title for this novel that explores lives past, present but almost past, and new life just moving.
I think about these characters at random moments even now, years after I read the book. That is one of Stegner's greatest gifts, to create new, real characters that speak to the heart as well as the mind. They become more than written words, but very real acquaintances....less
Read in March, 2008
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 (a...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 it should be), but not long-winded (despite the one time I thought it was getting to be so).
And along the way to a satisfying ending, we get to live the amazing story of the grandmother, a well-drawn character, that we empathize with. Though we may not always agree with her, we understand her. Through her Eastern eyes, we see the new West of the U.S. in its beauty and its harshness (sometimes I get impatient with descriptions of scenery etc, but never here -- the writing is always deft), a world she leaves at times, but can't help returning to....less
Read in April, 2000
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...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 theme, I found the book beautiful and haunting.
Stegner is a real artist. His individual sentences are carefully crafted. He masterfully winds together multiple plot lines, which span centuries, and uses them to enrich and illuminate each other. He also creates a vivid sense of place in his descriptions of the 19th century American West.
The characters are not easy; they are multi-dimensional, prickly, and flawed. But how could you write a realistic book about marriage with perfectly likable characters?...less
Read in July, 2007
I read this book about two years ago ,and am going to read it again over this next week. It is a book both about history ,and fictional characters .These people are deeply drawn and you the reader are in their world and heads from the first page. This book is not just a look back but also about contemporary America ,family ,and the struggles we face when we face dependency.It can be confusing at times when the author moves from the distant past into the now it begins with ,but you quickly...more
I read this book about two years ago ,and am going to read it again over this next week. It is a book both about history ,and fictional characters .These people are deeply drawn and you the reader are in their world and heads from the first page. This book is not just a look back but also about contemporary America ,family ,and the struggles we face when we face dependency.It can be confusing at times when the author moves from the distant past into the now it begins with ,but you quickly learn to recognize these transitions as you read.It is a visually stunning book.Wallace paints with words so well you can watch the movie in your head.The title refers to one characters work, a thankless ,and difficult task of creating a building material we now take for granted....cement ,and of the way we first dealt with building in places that were not inclined to make it easy.If you are up to an intense read and are interested in life when building things was still a big deal ,and much of the world was wild still ,and women were not as free ,but still managed to be themselves you will like this book....less
Stegner is a great writer. His prose is lovely and flowing. This book, however, has an overwhelming sense of finality to it. Still lovely but extremely depressing. Here's a good passage to explain what I am trying to say:
"For several weeks now I have had the sense of something about to come to an end-that old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air. But different now. Then, durin...more
Stegner is a great writer. His prose is lovely and flowing. This book, however, has an overwhelming sense of finality to it. Still lovely but extremely depressing. Here's a good passage to explain what I am trying to say:
"For several weeks now I have had the sense of something about to come to an end-that old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air. But different now. Then, during prep school and college, and even afterwards when teaching tied my life to the known patterns of the school year, there was both regret and anticipation in it. Another fall, another turned page:there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last years mistakes and failures had been wiped clean by summer. But now it is not an ending and a beginning I can look forward to, but only an ending; and feel that change in the air without exhilaration, with only a heaviness and unwillingness of spirit. With a little effort I could get profoundly depressed!" ...less
Read in January, 2005
recommended to Linda by:
Pulitzer Prize Novels List
recommends it for:
History Lovers who seek depression
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 ...more
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 that he had an eternity to tell his story. There are tons of good reviews about Angle of Repose on this website that tell about the plot, and so I'll leave that to you to discover. Really, when I was done reading it I felt like a heavy load was taken off my back, so I truly don't want to revisit the story. Trin, who gave a review on this website, expressed my feelings: "This fits into the category of "Books I feel I ought to like but really, really don't."...less
Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
everyone
Starts off slow but gets into a compelling rhythm that links the present (an aging, wheelchair confined writer), his boyhood and the ordeals that his ancestors faced in moving West.
The plot jumps around a bit between past and present, but the threads all come together. Stegner is the consummate storyteller with a keen vision of the Old West and the obstacles that earlier generations faced as the moved across the plains and the Sierras.
Another hallmark of Stegner's novels (of which I hav...more
Starts off slow but gets into a compelling rhythm that links the present (an aging, wheelchair confined writer), his boyhood and the ordeals that his ancestors faced in moving West.
The plot jumps around a bit between past and present, but the threads all come together. Stegner is the consummate storyteller with a keen vision of the Old West and the obstacles that earlier generations faced as the moved across the plains and the Sierras.
Another hallmark of Stegner's novels (of which I have read about 8) is the dark family secret. Something terrible and inexplicable that haunts the characters as they grow older.
I read this twice ... once on my own and once for a Stanford Salon last year. The added moderaton by an English professor really added a lot the discussion.
This is a good introduction to Stegner, an author worth reading who not only left his mark in his works but in a generation of students he trained at the Stanford Creative Writing Workshop .... Ken Kesey, Larry McMurty, Scott Momaday, Edward Albee and many more....less
bookshelves:
2008,
classic-american
Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
anyone
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&q...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 fascinating exploration of mining and irrigation and the difficulties of getting, and keeping, funding for projects.
As you read, the characters become very real people. Motivations and actions are completely believable. Stegner uses the now familiar but then fairly unusual conceit of a person writing a history and how that history effects the historian's own life and character. The narrator is a marvel of characterization.
I loved this book....less
Read in January, 1996
This may be my all-time favorite book. In the interest of full disclosure...it took me several chapters to get into it on my first read.
IT IS ABOUT...Two interweaving plots. The first is a first-person account by an older, disabled historian living in his grandparents' home and researching his grandmother's biography. The second is the story he uncovers about his grandmother, a complex and intriguing intellectual and artist who marries a mining engineer in the late 19th century. She...more
This may be my all-time favorite book. In the interest of full disclosure...it took me several chapters to get into it on my first read.
IT IS ABOUT...Two interweaving plots. The first is a first-person account by an older, disabled historian living in his grandparents' home and researching his grandmother's biography. The second is the story he uncovers about his grandmother, a complex and intriguing intellectual and artist who marries a mining engineer in the late 19th century. She moves through the unsettled west (US and Mexico) - places that Wallace Stegner paints beautifully.
WHY I LOVE IT...Stegner is a masterful writer - period. I am moved by the energy of places, and he is able to transmit the enormity of the west in a palpable way. It is also intriguing to me how he writes the story of a woman's life through the filter of a male narrator. Finally, he depicts the tension between human restlessness and a need for stability in a way that is simultaneously provocative and comforting. ...less
Read in January, 2002
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...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 so beautiful and detailed, I feel like I have been there. One of my favorite was their time in Mexico.
The novel eventually reaches a point where a terrible tragedy changes everything for Lyman's great-grandparents and all of the generations that follow. The tragedy and Lyman's eventual conclusions about forgiveness and love are extremely moving and powerful....less
Read in February, 2008
Pulitzer Schmulitzer. What started out as a tantalizing epic saga ended kinda bland and disappointing. I kept waiting for the big reveal. When it finally came, all Stegner gives is the fallout. I understand what Stegner was trying to do--the point of the story I guess is really the disintegration of a marriage, how we change and thus diverge from each other over time, and how at some point we (usually) come to terms with what our lives become, for better or worse. I guess ending the story w...more
Pulitzer Schmulitzer. What started out as a tantalizing epic saga ended kinda bland and disappointing. I kept waiting for the big reveal. When it finally came, all Stegner gives is the fallout. I understand what Stegner was trying to do--the point of the story I guess is really the disintegration of a marriage, how we change and thus diverge from each other over time, and how at some point we (usually) come to terms with what our lives become, for better or worse. I guess ending the story where he did, the narrator (and Stegner) got his point across, but I was left wanting more. And, I wasn't particularly interested in Lyman Ward's story so it was annoying that he kept popping back in. I realize the significance of his story in the larger context, but I just wasn't into it. This is a well-written and engaging book, but if you're looking for an earth-mover in 400-odd pages, you'll be disappointed. For me, big investment (of time) for a small return....less
Read in May, 2008
Rarely do I read a book that helps me step out of my own life, examine it, and understand it better to the extent this one did. A few of its themes hit bulls-eye onto ideas I'd been studying the past while. 1) Masculine and feminine traits in a marriage and how they balance one another. Stegner places his principal characters in extreme conditions under which they can be more clearly distinguished and contrasted: stoic western miner/engineer wed to the verbal eastern artist/socialite. 2) The d...more
Rarely do I read a book that helps me step out of my own life, examine it, and understand it better to the extent this one did. A few of its themes hit bulls-eye onto ideas I'd been studying the past while. 1) Masculine and feminine traits in a marriage and how they balance one another. Stegner places his principal characters in extreme conditions under which they can be more clearly distinguished and contrasted: stoic western miner/engineer wed to the verbal eastern artist/socialite. 2) The development of culture and civilization in the west by women as opposed to its early exploration and settlement primarily by men. 3)The way history and our heritage shapes our character and lifestyle. The juxtaposition of the narrator's generation with that of his grandparents' develops this while adding denser layers to the plot. And the end of their stories...I really didn't see them coming till I was almost there. Maybe I just didn't want to see it......less
book data (includes all editions)
avg rating
(all editions):
4.33 (2396 ratings)
avg rating
(this edition): 4.00
(2 ratings)
number of reviews: 440
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Angle of Repose (Contemporary American Fiction)
isbn: 014016930X
