Oh....it is going to be some time before I get this book out of my head...6 stars if it were possible.

I am conflicted. Having just finished this book, I find my thoughts engaged in a heated debate. How I can capture my response to this book? Why did I score it a four instead of a five like all of my close friends and associates? Was the writing not brilliant in parts? Indeed. Were the characterizations not complex and layered? Most assuredly. What is at the root of my angst?
The book was painful. Several times I nearly quit reading. I didn't really care for most of the people. I didn't want to keep them in my life and share with them their anguish and unrequited dreams. I was angry with Wallace Stegner. Why do you have to write so well that the wounds these characters inflicted are real and festering and gangrous?
This novel has been on my "to read" shelf for nearly half of a century. Wallace Stegner is a legend where I live. Seminars and symposiums are held in his honor and memory. He lived beneath the mountains that I call home.
However, I wasn't caught up in the story for quite some time. In fact, were it not for the commitment I have to lead the discussion in an upcoming book group, I may have totally abandoned this novel.
The style took me some getting used to - the bantering and commentary amidst supposed primary documents in letter format. Finally after about seventy pages, I simply admitted to myself that there were bound to be ups and downs in this book. There were going to be times I was engaged and times I was not.
Perhaps the novel is "too real". Perhaps there are more marriages like this than I would like to admit. Perhaps there are parts of each character in all of us - parts we don't want to own and aren't proud to recognize.
I mourn for the losses in the novel while I admire the fortitude and the tenacity of the characters. I reverence the building of the West and the solid stock of pioneers that forged into the unknown. I honor my ancestors. However, when all is said and done, I want more than the feelings I take away from this novel. I want more than just an angle of repose at the end of my life.
Scholar and friends mark this Pultizer Prize book as Stegner's best. Crossing to Safety remains my favorite. Ironically, I have just finished two other books written by students of Wallace Stegner. Wendell Berry and Larry McMurtry also wrote about the West but instead of mining as a fulcrum, it was cattle drives or farming. I am ready to move on now to something different. How fortunate that choices are so abundant and that I have so many good recommendations from friends on Goodreads.

Returning to my earlier "review" I have finally come to terms with my selfish response. Simply because I wasn't settled with the way the relationships in the book resolved does not mean I can not give credit to the author for a masterpiece. This book still slips into my thoughts and in all honesty the reviews and responses from other Goodread friends have influenced me. I will rank it the five stars it deserves. Now I hope for awhile at least I can put it to rest.

What a lovely book! Stegner certainly shows his talent in painting pictures with words. Pictures that feel like you can reach out and touch; flowers that you can smell; a desert wind that you can feel on your face. Wow! He's that good.

When the summaries of this book talked about a man writing a biography of his grandmother, I didn't think I'd be too interested -- but I really was! I was pulled in right away by the way he described her, his grandfather, their adventurous journey through the 1870-90s American West, and their tumultuous relationship.

I enjoyed Stegner's Crossing to Safety, but I think I enjoyed this one even more! I highly recommend it.

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.

La historia de una pareja imposible que duró 60 años. También una sentida y generosa alabanza a los pioneros del Oeste norteamericano.

n  "Lo que a mí me interesa de todos esos papeles no es la novelista e ilustradora Susan Burling Ward, ni Oliver Ward, el ingeniero, ni tampoco el Oeste donde pasaron sus vidas. Lo que realmente me interesa es cómo dos partículas tan distintas pudieron fundirse, y con cuánta presión, para rodar cuesta abajo hacia el futuro y hasta alcanzar el ángulo de reposo en que yo los conocí. Ahí es donde está el interés." n

Un ángulo de reposo apenas concebible dada la fuerte inclinación que el montículo de su matrimonio presentaba, siempre amenazando derrumbe, a causa de las enormes diferencias que entre ellos había en sus caracteres, estilos de vida, intereses y ambiciones sociales.

n   “Una romántica y un realista. Una mujer que era más señora que mujer, y un hombre que era más hombre que caballero.” n

Nada parecía unirles. Él, ingeniero, un hombre con ansias de libertad, de una vida al aire libre y nómada en la que sentir la emoción de construir cosas, íntegro, fiel a sus principios por mucho que ello le perjudicara en su carrera, competente en su oficio y poco fuera de él. Ella, con temperamento y capacidades artísticas, pintora y escritora, acostumbrada a una intensa vida social y cultural, y con una fuerte necesidad de pertenencia a un lugar, con inclinaciones homosexuales o hacia hombres sensibles y delicados y una esnob aristocrática que se encuentra molesta por la falta de ambición de él, por su espíritu de segundón, por su escasa brillantez social, por su excesiva confianza en todo ser humano y lo mal que se defendía ante las injusticias, por lo difícil que le resultaban las palabras y lo mucho que ella las amaba. Su nieto, con 58 años, inválido e historiador retirado, un muñeco roto y viejo, como él se ve, aborda la tarea de descubrir el secreto que tal relación matrimonial guarda, quizás esperando averiguar algo importante de su vida. Para ello cuenta con la abundante correspondencia de su abuela.

n   “… me gustaría oír tu vida como tú la oyes, acercándose a ti, en vez de oírla como yo la oigo, un sonido austero de expectativas reducidas, deseos mitigados, esperanzas postergadas o abandonadas, oportunidades perdidas, derrotas aceptadas, agravios sufridos…”n

Y será su abuela Susan el personaje central, como lo fue Charity en su novela “En lugar seguro”, otra mujer fuerte que vivió un tiempo en el que las mujeres tenían muy difícil (más) desarrollar su potencial y que sufrió por la escasa ambición y méritos de su marido. Pero hay importantes diferencias entre ellas, mientras que Susan se sacrificó y hasta apoyó en ocasiones de forma entusiasta el trabajo nómada y salvaje de su esposo, sin abandonar sus trabajos como ilustradora y escritora, Charity puso por encima de las pretensiones artísticas de su marido sus vicarias ambiciones profesionales.

n  "… ¿que los mantuvo juntos a él y a la abuela durante más de sesenta años? ¿pasión? ¿integridad? ¿cultura? ¿las convenciones?...” n

Otra cosa importante que une a las dos novelas es el estilo claro y ligero por el que te dejas llevar en volandas capítulo tras capítulo haciéndote cómplice, por lo mucho que deja a la inteligencia y a la imaginación del lector, de unos hechos y unas vidas sencillas a las que, no obstante, dota de una relevancia extraordinaria.

¿Entonces por qué no cinco estrellas? La pregunta realmente debería ser ¿por qué cuatro y no tres? Bien, por la sencilla razón de que todo eso que digo arriba pesa tanto en mi valoración que compensa con mucho las, para mí, sobrantes y pesadas descripciones de paisajes, costumbres y personas del oeste del XIX, o el generoso uso de la técnica proustiana de ilustrarnos acerca de lo que sienten los personajes, de los que piensan, de lo que les sucede, mediante retratos de un detallismo abrumador de conversaciones y escenas que en no pocos casos me han parecido banales o, por ejemplo, mostrándonos el mérito literario de Susan mediante un buen número de las numerosas cartas que redactó (escritas realmente por Mary Hallock Foote, la ilustradora y escritora en la que está inspirada Susan). Es más, buena parte de esta historia de los abuelos se me hizo más molesta aun por el abrumador desequilibrio que guarda con la parte en la que sabemos de la situación que atraviesa el narrador, los problemas con su vida pasada y presente, con un mundo que cambia demasiado rápido. Tanto que más de una vez pensé (e hice) algo parecido a lo que nos comenta sobre las muchas cartas de su abuela:

n   “Tengo que ir pasando y pasando las páginas de esas cartas de pura cháchara, vacías, durante mucho tiempo hasta dar con alguna en la que merezca la pena detenerse.” n

There's a bit of everything in this book. History for those who like to see where we come from, biography for those who relish learning about unusual historical figures, psychology for those delving into what makes people tick, philosophy for those who embrace the weighty in our existence, literature for those who love language and captivating prose, and even a love story for the romantically inclined.

This is a slow moving mosaic of a read, without propulsive tension that many want or need in a novel. It's a mosey through the weeds of life, a hard paddle at times, a journey where one hopes and anticipates that just around the bend, the view will change, the current will relent, the sun will shine...only to find more of the same. But still, the depth, the questions, the angst...it all kept me captivated.

The title alone stands for so many possibilities. This inside view of a marriage, two different people rolling the dice over and over again, living the outcomes of those choices. Struggling to find that "angle of repose" where things stabilize. Where expectations and realities lean safely together. Where personality differences can co-exist without rancor or misunderstanding. Where the answer to staying or leaving becomes clear. Where sacrificing for others confronts self-care and finds an uneasy resting place. Where trusting others bumps against standing up for oneself without toppling the entire world.

"What really interests me is how two such unlike particles clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until they reached the angle of repose where I knew them."

"What held him and Grandmother together for more than sixty years? Passion? Integrity? Culture? Convention? Inviolability of contract? Notions of Possession?" None of the above? All of the above? Marriage is hard work, fraught with missteps and compromises, and this couple represents a bit of all of us.

"I am a justice man, not a mercy man. I can't help feeling that if justice is observed, mercy is forever unnecessary."..."I know no way of discounting the doctrine that when you take something you want, and damn the consequences, then you had better be ready to accept whatever consequences ensue."

Marriage is a bond that demands constant vigilance regarding our beliefs and actions, an ability to bend and graft onto new thoughts in order to survive.

A novel about our similarities and differences, about our values and our natures, about our hopes and our failings, about our learning and growing and paying the price for our mistakes and mistreatments. While not an exciting river ride through rapids, it offered repeated moments of suddenly circling in an eddy, pondering the great dilemmas and truths of the human experience.

Angle of Repose is a book that I went into completely blind. I knew nothing about it and had read nothing else by Stegner. The only thing I knew was that it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and I am working through that list of books. I am so glad that I went in blind because it surprised me in the best way. I love when a piece of historical fiction teaches me about a story I didn't previously know, and when a real person comes vividly to life on its pages. Stegner's book is based on the true story of a woman pioneer in the west, and that makes the book both unique and powerful. So often when we tell the stories of history -- especially on the American frontier - they are the stories of men.

To tell his story, Stegner created a fictional character who is researching and writing the story of his grandparents. He is divorced, confined to a wheel chair after losing a leg. Angry. Depressed.
Isolated. But he discovers the story of his grandparents and it becomes his mission to write the tale. This man has two caretakers who help him to bathe and dress, and they become secretaries, taking dictation. His interactions with these two women provide both him and the reader some light-hearted relief in the story.

The grandmother in the story is based on the true story of Mary Hallock Foote, who was the child of a wealthy, New York, family of Quakers. She was born in 1847, and married a mining engineer who took her west to make his fortune. Many women from this era would have stayed east, waiting years for their husbands to return but Mary chose to go with him. She was often the only woman.

Mary wrote letters to her family and friends (and kept friendships alive) despite not seeing them for many years. She shared information about her life out west, her financial struggles, and some intimacies about her husband and family. She alsoTo keep her brain alive, she writes frequently to literary friends back east (often without seeing them for years) and we a learn a lot about her marriage, their family hardships and her financial struggles from these real letters. She’s an artist who sells her sketches drew pictures of western life which were sold to magazines back east, and this income was often the sole income for her family.

Mary was married for sixty years traveling the west, living in California, Colorado, South Dakota, Idaho and even Mexico. She had a tough life. Her husband never made that fortune and often lost money on his schemes.

I live in the mountains of Colorado. A few miles from me mining is still the biggest industry, and the old mines from Mary's time still dot the hillsides. Leadville is nearby. So the descriptions in this book were so real to me. I felt like I could walk down the streets nearby and see exactly what Mary saw and wrote about.

This was a wonderful read.

Doggone that Wally Stegner! If only he were still alive, I would hunt him down and hug his guts out! No other author speaks to me the way he does. I will try to write a better review if I get the time...

First of all, I love Wallace Stegner’s prose.

Second of all, he knows what to tell, what to hold back and how to tie up a story. Even the title has meaning.

Stegner was given access to Mary Hallock Foote's letters and information about her life. It was first thought he would write a biography. He sought to get under her skin; he sought to understand who she really was and why she did what she did. What does one do when portions of what you are searching for are missing? You analyze and think deeply about what you have. From what is known you must then make educated guesses. It is so Stegner fills in the holes. He turns what is known into probable, believable, beautifully written, thought provoking mix of fact and fiction. He does this with the hand of an artist.

The narrator of Stegner’s book is a grandson, going by the name of Lyman Ward. He is in his fifties, at odds with his wife and very ill. Lyman’s son wants his father to be placed in a care home; the son deems his father can be better looked after there. Lyman doesn’t agree.

Lyman is studying his grandparent’s lives. It is Lyman’s grandparents that are based on two real people--Mary Hallock Foote (1847-1938) and her husband Arthur de Wint Foote (1849-1933). He was a mining engineer. She was of Quaker lineage and schooled in art and literature, with strong ties to her home and life and friends in New England. Married to a man drawn to the West she became an author and illustrator depicting life in the early mining communities of the American West.

Stegner’s story is a study of Lyman’s grandparents, a husband and wife that loved each other deeply but were drawn by different needs and desires. It is a study of a marriage of opposites. Lyman asks himself what his grandparents’ lives say to him. What can he learn from their lives? What do their lives teach him? Stegner has started with two real person’s lives and created a marvelous book of fiction centered around a couple that love each other deeply but are opposites. Ultimately, he is asking what their lives say about how one should live life.

The book is beautifully written and thought provoking. It gives much more than just a correct rendering of what is known about a couple that did exist because it shows us what can be learned from their lives. The philosophical message cannot be set forth as fact. I value Stegner’s integrity in drawing Arthur and Mary Foote’s lives as he saw them, warts and all, strengths and weaknesses. I value his creative genius, his ability to give us more than just the bare facts.

The audiobook is narrated wonderfully by Mark Bramhall. Perfect speed, easy to follow and intoned to perfectly capture each character’s personality.

Mary Hallock Foote's non-fiction, A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote, was published in 1972 a year after Stegner published Angle of Repose, for which he received the Pulitzer in 1972. I actually believe that Stegner’s fictional version of the Footes’ lives may be the more rewarding.


*****************

Angle of Repose 5 stars
All the Little Live Things 5 stars
Remembering Laughter 4 stars
Crossing to Safety 4 stars
The Spectator Bird 4 stars
The Big Rock Candy Mountain 2 stars
A Shooting Star 1 star

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

Let me give you the upside first. Wallace Stegner shows here an astonishing gift for narrative continuity and character. The structure swings between present day (1970) Grass Valley, California, and a number of late 19th century western U.S. boom towns. Despite the rough hewn pioneering aspects, the story is highly domestic; you might even call it a love story. And the only thing that glues it together is Stegner’s prodigious gifts for character and continuity. He has no wit to speak of; at least he doesn’t display it here, the only book of his I’ve half read. Neither is his skill at metaphor very zingy; if anything, it’s plodding. But I found it thoroughly enjoyable until about p. 317 when it fell from my hands. It’s too marital, too family centered and earnest. Though a deft writer his subject matter is a stone bore to me.

I listened to Angle of Repose over the course of some weeks and loved it but cant help feeling I would have preferred to have read it. Wallace Stegner's writing was wonderful and many's the time I found myself rewinding to listen again to the phrasing of a certain passage but it was at these times I really wished for the chance to feast on the words, to see them and marvel at how they'd been strung together to paint beautiful or evocative pictures of the past. The story was so cleverly delivered - being told from the perspective of a biographer writing his grandmothers history - the existence of the real author was completely forgotten and I found myself believing it to be a biography I was listening to. Not so however, this was a blend of literary and historical fiction at its best and it was simply delightful.

Lyman Ward our biographer is wheelchair bound and spends his days researching and recording the lives if his grandparents Susan and Oliver Ward. Of Eastern USA origin, Susan was the genteel lady artist who married Oliver, an engineer determined to make his way in the far West. His pursuit of engineering work them living in mining settlements in the unsettled and far more primitive states. From an historical perspective this was eye opening and I was both interested and intrigued by their experiences. However despite the historical elements, at its core this book was about relationships.

It has been almost one month since I finished this book and I have struggled to put into words how I felt about it, to find the words to do justice to this remarkable work of fiction. Fortunately for me I stumbled onto GR friend Sara's review which says and does everything mine cannot. It is perhaps my favorite GR review ever and I have read many! Please do yourself a favor and read her words, and if you haven't already I hope you will be persuaded to read Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose.

На ову књигу наишао сам истражујући листу добитника Пулицерове награде и на основу свега прочитаног о њој, деловало ми је као нешто што може да ми се свиди.
Сиже је такође изузетно занимљив.

Историчар прикован болешћу за колица, на основу докумената, писама и фотографија реконструише живот своје баке. Уз њену животну причу, исписује се и историја освајања западних пространстава САД с краја XIX века и покушај њиховог "култивисања".
Она је богата, изузетно образована Њујорчанка, која због љубави према супругу, рударском инжењеру, са њим, због његових пословних прилика одлази на запад. Живот пун интелектуалних узбуђења и кретања у монденским круговима замењује се животом у брвнарама, у нетакнутој природи, у сталној оскудици и ишчекивању.
Кроз писма својој најбољој пријатељици (и, могуће, платонској љубави), нараторова бака исказује своја најдубља размишљања, сумње и осећања и ти делови су заиста сјајни (наводно су писма аутентична, због чега је аутор имао и проблема са оспоравањем књиге).
Сјајни су и описи природе и пионирских подухвата о покушају зауздавања великих река, крчењу земљишта, премештању од места до места и покушају стварања сопственог имања.

Дакле, у добром делу књиге сам уживао. Једино, имам утисак да је могло да буде за једно 150-200 страна краће - неколико епизода је веома детаљно описано, али без неке веће функције или доприноса динамици књиге.

Кога занима "дивљи" запад (али без насиља) и ко воли овакве хронике, сигурно ће уживати.