Angle of Repose

By: Wallace Stegner

Narrated by: Mark Bramhall

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1971, Angle of Repose has also been selected by the editorial board of the Modern Library as one of the hundred best novels of the 20th century.

Wallace Stegner's uniquely American classic centers on Lyman Ward, a noted historian who relates a fictionalized biography of his pioneer grandparents at a time when he has become estranged from his own family. Through a combination of research, memory, and exaggeration, Ward voices ideas concerning the relationship between history and the present, art and life, parents and children, and husbands and wives. Like other great quests in literature, Lyman Ward's investigation leads him deep into the dark shadows of his own life. The result is a deeply moving novel that, through the prism of one family, illuminates the American present against the fascinating background of its past.

Set in many parts of the West, Angle of Repose is a story of discovery - personal, historical, and geographical - that endures as Wallace Stegner's masterwork: an illumination of yesterday's reality that speaks to today's.

©1971 Wallace Stegner (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Brilliant....Two stories, past and present, merge to produce what important fiction must: a sense of the enhancement of life." ( Los Angeles Times)
"Masterful...Reading it is an experience to be treasured." ( Boston Globe)

Marvelous!

I found both the story and the writing powerful. The subject matter is the trajectory of a marriage within the trajectory of American frontier settlement, circa 1880s. What defines the failure or success of a relationship? Are success or failure even relevant to a long marriage or to the settlement of a continent? Maybe the lessons involved are what matter… not failed promise. Vivid story telling, gorgeous words, descriptions of landscape, and strong characters.

Slow

Felt like I was reading an assigned book for a high school English literature class. I did finish it and towards the end it was better.

Delicious.

The language of this narrative is delicious. I’ll let others comment on the rich story and excellent performance. I just deeply relished the lush, vivid, detailed but not overwrought descriptions.

Brilliant!

Angle of Repose may be the best book I have ever read. Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the fortunes of four generations of one family as they attempt to build a life for themselves in the American West. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents’ remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he’s willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.

Stegner’s novel is stylistically complex and simply outstanding. I savored every sentence of his smart, flowing, eloquent prose, rereading his gorgeous sentences repeatedly to soak them in. His use of metaphor was brilliant, and the characters were richly drawn, particularly the grandmother, a strong, heroic woman who is unkind and spiteful with a “cumulative grudge.”

I can’t say enough good things about this dazzling novel. Wow. To read more of my reviews, google my name.

Simpering female

I love Angle of Repose. So I got the audio book for a road trip and found the narrator's rendition of a Susan's voice really grating. It seemed like he went out of his way to make her sound like a whiner... not at all like how I imagined it when I read the novel. There were times when he "slipped" from the effort and she sounded somewhat normal, but in general she came across like a breathy, helpless airhead. Gah!