Angle of Repose

This is a great book, with tons of beautiful observations about life, relationships, and individual behavior (or "conduct", as the narrator would prefer). The writing is certainly Pulitzer-worthy; Stegner writes sophisticated prose with great flow and lots of meaning to unpack. It's also a great source of accurate descriptions of 19th century pioneer towns and careers, which I greatly enjoyed. This is the sort of book I can see reading again in the future.The story follows a wheelchair-bound man named Lyman Ward as he attempts to write a biography of his grandmother, using only old newspaper clippings, letters, and diary entries as source material. In writing about his grandmother, he hopes to gain some sort insight and understanding over his own life and relationships.This book, like many Pulitzer winners, is not without faults. The middle portion of the book is quite a slog, frankly - nothing much happens, and what does happen is generally just a succession of failures, dashed hopes, and unfortunate events. It's a little hard to get through. This is especially strange because the story ends quite abruptly - for both Lyman and his grandmother - and some pretty pivotal events feel glossed over while less consequential things are discussed in mind-numbing detail earlier in the book. It's a strange decision, in my opinion.The other problem is just how much speculation Lyman does in writing his grandmother's story. He readily admits to making up parts of the story you just finished reading to fill in blanks in the historical record. To "make sense of things he does know, for fact", as he puts it. It's difficult at times to get engaged with the story when the story-teller admits to making it up.But those are small complaints. This is a great book about people, about life, about regret, about forgiveness. It is not meant to be a totally historically accurate tale of someone's life - it's the tale of someone reading about someone else's life in order to extrapolate meaning from it in the context of their own. It succeeds masterfully.

Angle of Repose is held in high regard for its reflection on marriage; its description of the West of the 1880's and 90's and the writing of Wallace Stegner. Stegner won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize and Angle of Repose continues to top lists of best novels about the American West. It is a uniquely American story and it does portray the west far different from the "Wild Wild West" that usually comes to mind.Susan Burling Ward is a young, single, attractive, well educated and artistic woman growing up north of New York City and quickly finding a place in 1870's NYC high society. She surprises even herself for falling in love with a young man of modest means and temperament who captures her imagination and heart through his kindness and his ambition to be part of the West's burgeoning growth. He's an engineer that wants to be part of the big projects that will define the west; mining, dams, transportation.Stegner's story in a story has us discovering Susan through letters that she wrote to her best friend Augusta throughout her life. A hundred years later her grandson; Lyman Ward, now 57 is driven to better understand the grandfather he idolized and the grandmother he loved. Stegner moves back and forth between Susan's life recreated through letters and Lyman's efforts to connect the dots and the present (1970). Through both stories we gradually also learn about three generations of Wards including Lyman's father.This has all the makings of a great tapestry of a family a la "Giant" or "Gone with the Wind" or Michener with the promise of extraordinary prose. While the story has both the grand scale of "The West" coupled with this very intimate story of the Wards it did not connect to me as I had hoped. Susan Ward is portrayed as an extraordinary woman living a frontier life, dedicated to family and working feverishly to publish art and novels to support her family and feed her creative urges. Her husband is the strong, silent type, that one frequently underestimates for brains, sensitivity and empathy for others. Through all their travails in California, Colorado, Idaho, Mexico and on and on with drama and tragedy it still did not connect as I thought it would. I just could not see why I was supposed to empathize with Susan as Lyman clearly did. She struggles with feelings of superiority over her husband followed by regrets as she sees his talents and dedication. She promises to remember and yet slides again into frequent doubts leading me to find less sympathy for her circumstances.While Stegner is hailed for portraying a version of the west that is real and so different from our unsettled images but I think he falls short in capturing the energy of the time or to tap into the diversity of the people moving west; immigrants, profiteers, frontier families, dispossessed Civil War veterans and Free Men and of course Native Americans. By focusing so closely on the Wards and their circle perhaps the view of the west is not as fully robust as Stegner intended. His reflections on modern life worked better for me. I really liked the internal dialogue that Lyman Ward has with himself and his discussions with neighbors and friends. There is more of an arc to his story which worked well. Lyman is much more nuanced and in the first person we're so much more able to feel what he feels. His struggles engaged me and I liked him.The writing frequently failed to keep my attention. The ending will not work for everyone. While in totality I appreciate the book and glad I read it, I am not sure this belongs on the list of All Time Greats.

The American dream failed for this Victorian couple - the engineer Oliver Ward and his illustrator wife Susan - achieved no capital advantage / leverage for their Labour. Stegner set up Susan to fail; she has an entrenched school friendship with Augusta a New York society hostess. How can Susan report in her letters saying she enjoyed a morning with Ms A a Cornish wife or Mrs B an Irish labourers wife? She can’t, it would not impress Augusta. Susan’s attachment to Augusta and the resulting character flaw only yields by page 519 after her marriage to Oliver is compromised. Forgiveness an essential theme refer 2 below. .Is it a good read? It’s a quality crafted approach but his message melding the struggles of two couples lacked authenticity for me in the female voicing, and humour was sparse. The author parades his knowledge, but I love Stegner’s landscape prose. A 3 star read became 4 stars since the Pulitzer winning text is a must read for students and rightly so, a multitude of essay topics rise:1. The rich vein of American lying and cheating was mined by Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn, how does it manifest itself at Leadville and Boise, how did the Wards an educated couple succumb?2. Stegner uses the symbolism of the rose garden to unite the problems of two couples; the Ward’s invalid grandson Lyman Ward and his wife Ellen, and Susan and Oliver; the shared theme of forgiveness essential to comprehend the message in this novel is uncovered - discuss.3. Separate the letters to Augusta into Stegner embellished letters from the Mary Hallock Foote historical archive and those letters 100% not attributable to the MHF archive e.g., the Michocan submission. Discuss the merits of using that archive in Stegner’s scheme and the disadvantages.4. How does the absence of authentic ‘salon’ dialogue harm this novel? Compose your own dialogue between Susan, Augusta and a real NY socialite in 1878 Clara Jerome (later Mrs Moreton Frewen). Test your dialogue with that expressed in the log cabin ‘salon’ in Leadville. Stegner’s dialogue delivers the opportunity / claims abuse message but Susan’s contribution fails to impress or charm as authentic.5. Susan Ward dismisses the Cornish yet their mining tradition of shared partnerships from their homeland would eventually flourish in San Jose - the future Silicon Valkey. Stegner smudges the Chinese, berates the Irish, puts down the Cornish, and English capital why is this stance prevalent among American authors? It was Annie Proulx who first condemned Moreton Frewen ( Winston Churchill’s uncle) in Wyoming. Frewen in his life would meet 8 presidents of the USA some during operations at his Powder River Cattle Company while pouring millions of capital into the USA.

Quite a memorable read, although it did feel like a bit of a slog where it lagged in some of the middle chapters. Stegner's writing is sumptuous and full of beautiful lyrical description of setting and a real sense of a place in time.The novel is set in the early 1970s as a retired academic writes the story of his grandparents' marriage through a series of discovered letters, artefacts and clippings. The family story begins in the 1870s and spans a period of roughly 15 years as the saga is told. A talented and artistic young women begins her life with an ambitious and somewhat stoic engineer who plans to help pioneer in the American west. Via California, Colorado, Mexico, Idaho and later back to California the story weaves between episodes of hope and despair as one fate befalls another.Concurrently, the author, writing from his wheelchair in the ancestral cottage in California, looks at the process of marriage and life with disappointment both in his grandparents' past and in his own present. Very believable characters and expansive prose serve to transport the reader effectively to a world gone by - some of the descriptive passages of travelling in the old west especially stood out as some of the best I've ever read.This is the first book of his that I've read and I will definitely read more.

Fantastic read, I bought the book to read on a road trip to the American west. Interesting comparisons between 1970's and late 19th century morality and the reckless ambition of the American West with the civilized established East Coast.Still haven't checked out how closely the book follows Mary Foote's correspondence, but what a great idea using authentic sources as a basis for an historical novel, ensuring the reader gets a true feel for the times.

Superb. So well written - makes you feel you are right there. And what a great title.

Very good book