An American Masterpiece

Angle of Repose is simply one of the "Great American Novels" that everyone supposedly wants to write. Wallace Stegner provides exactly that, through an incredibly engaging narrative. The book is told in two time periods -- the first, through a man who has recently lost a leg and needs to be cared for much to his distaste. Largely as a way to keep focused on something besides his own physical and emotional pain, he begins piecing together an account of his grandparents life, when they were early settlers of the West. These aren't cowboy stories -- they are of his grandmother, a New York socialite who falls in love with a man who is going to lay some of the necessary engineering infrastructure out West. The stories of the grandparents are the other main narrative, and the telling of their lives is both fascinating and immense. It's really amazing how Stegner can capture exactly what the world was like when, for instance, Oregon had no electricity.

The book reads both like a sweeping epic tale and as a deeply personal account of a family's life. Both periods of time are fascinating, especially given that this book originally came out in the early 1970's -- the reflections on the "free sex" attitudes that younger people have to the protagonist were just being talked about when this book came out, and yet don't seem dated but poignant when reading it today.

It's hard to write an adequate review of this book given that so much of its wonder is in the perfect sentences that Stegner continually suprises the reader with. He may be the greatest American author of the last half of the century, and everyone should read this book. As an avid reader, I place this book among the very best that I have ever read. I simply cannot recommend it enough.