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Title: Angle of Repose by Wallace Earle Stegner ISBN: 0-14-016930-X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (110 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Nearly great
Comment: Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Angle of Repose" is one of those highly readable, but long, works that has a sort of uncomplicated depth while coming at us from a number of narrative angles. In many ways, it is a personal history of the American West - not the conquering or taming of it, but the hardscrabble give and take of a pioneering family trying to live and love each other under often impossible conditions. Lyman Ward, confined to a wheelchair, is a historian researching his grandmother's life in the West, mostly through his own need. Since he doesn't have detailed documents about every conversation, much of the book is conjecture, what he thought was said or what happened. Lyman's own spin is as interesting as the concrete documents, the letters from this not high-born but high-minded Eastern woman tied by love and convention to her simpler, earthy man, letters sent east to her skeptical best friend. Susan and Oliver Ward are all over the West, from California to Mexico to Idaho, chasing Oliver's dreams that never quite pan out. In the present, Lyman Ward is going through his own difficulties, and his research and writing tells him something about himself. Much of the book is masterful. The descriptions of the West are loving and the writing evocative. That said, the book is too long; you could lop off 80 pages with little problem, and some sections, "The Canyon" and the early part of "The Mesa", for instance, drag. Frankly, I think there should have been more about Lyman in the here and now; the extended passages about him that close the book we don't seem as well prepared for as we should have. These are minor quibbles, though. "Angle of Repose", though not truly an adventure tale, has an adventurous spirit, and would get a near-great 4.5 stars if allowed. When it was over, I found myself more moved than I expected to be, and the characters stayed with me long after I was finished reading.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Vacation Read
Comment: Stegner's Angle of Repose is a perfect Christmas holiday read. Its slow, rich, weighty style and content are so enjoyable that you'll want to curl up and live with this landscape and these characters for a while.
However, it's not a book to be read on your lunch break. The book's slowness and richness don't allow for a skimming read. To fully appreciate this book, you'll need a cup of tea, a wool blanket, and hours to be absorbed into Stegner's fictional world.
The retired historian, who narrates the book, tells us a story of his grandparents' role in developing the Western frontier, but as he tells this story his own story (perhaps even more intricate and engaging) emerges.
The title comes from a geological/engineering term which means: "the steepest angle at which loose material remains intact without sliding downslope." This is very fitting, since the reader gets the feeling that the narrator is at his angle of repose, and he may at any moment be pushed by life that extra bit that causes him to fall into separate avalanching pieces.
"Read this book, but give it the room it requires," is my advice. Otherwise you may find yourself thinking of it as too slow instead of perfectly paced.
Rating: 5
Summary: Stunning
Comment: Beautiful novel with rich and evocative detail, telling the story of four generations of a family. The story focuses on the tale of the narrators grandparents, early pioneers of the American West.
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Title: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Earle Stegner ISBN: 037575931X Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 09 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Big Rock Candy Mountain (Contemporary American Fiction) by Wallace Earle Stegner ISBN: 0140139397 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: All the Little Live Things (Contemporary American Fiction) by Wallace Earle Stegner ISBN: 0140154418 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1993 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Spectator Bird (Contemporary American Fiction) by Wallace Earle Stegner ISBN: 0140139400 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Remembering Laughter by Wallace Earle Stegner ISBN: 0140252401 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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