Angle of Repose

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"Wow! Oh, Wow! Wow, Oh, Wow!" I kept whispering after finishing this book in the middle of the night yesterday, even though my husband was sound asleep and there was no one to hear me. The last sentence of the book was what I call a "Sting Zing." Remember the movie, "The Sting," and how you felt at the end- that surprised, wow, oh wow feeling? That's how I felt when I read the last sentence of this book. It's a sentence that I'm sure I'll remember the rest of my life and moved my rating of this book from a 4 to a 5 star. One sentence. Just four or five chapters from the end, I had decided this was a 4 -star book for me. But that one sentence bumped 'er up. I thought it changed the central theme of the book. When you start reading, you think this is a magnificently written book about the beginnings of the western United States. About half-way through, you realize it's really about a marriage. It's the story of the marriage of a displaced Eastern socialite (Susan) to a rugged western man (Oliver). You get to know the characters intimately and live their lives with them. It’s the story of a marriage that starts- like an helium-filled balloon- full of hope and joy, and gradually, ever so gradually, deflates and loses air and becomes sad and even hopeless. I hated that. In fact, I got a few chapters from the end, and left the book sitting on my table for a couple of weeks. I didn't want to read the sad, foreshadowed parts. But, I guess the fact that I cared so much tells me how very, very good the book was. I loved these flawed, imperfect characters and wanted happiness for all of them. Then you come to that last sentence and realize that the book is about forgiveness in marriage. (I hope that doesn’t spoil it for you.)
I went to Wikipedia and found out that the letters in the book- the ones from Susan to Augusta, her socialite best friend in New York City- were real letters written by a Mary Hallock Foote who was a famous author/ illustrator in the Victorian age. These letters dictated the settings and basic story line for Stegner, who built this marvelous novel from them.
There is another main character in the book. This is a novel within a novel. Lyman Ward, a man in a wheelchair with a bone disease, decides to write the biography of his grandmother- a famous author and illustrator, Susan. So we read his novel as he writes it, learning about him and his life along the way. So it’s really two historical novels in one as we see a little of what’s happening in the late 1960’s and his views on that, as well as his own personal concerns.
I see why this book won the Pulitzer Prize. It is beautifully written and has great historical significance, but it’s greatest value is the exploration of marriage, hopefully causing the reader to analyze and improve their own marriages by looking for the good in one’s spouse, loving them for what they are, and mostly, forgiving them. Anyway, that’s my take away from this great book.


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