Angle of Repose - Review by Carole

How wonderful to discover an author that you lovelovelove! This is the chief reason I belong to a couple of book clubs and swap books with Chris. These activities take me out of my normal, chosen reading habits and introduce me to new authors and books.

Through one of my book clubs I discovered Wallace Stegner, and it's been a love affair ever since. How had I gone all of these years and never been introduced? The beauty of his writing in Crossing to Safety was so exquisite that I was almost afraid to read Angle of Repose. Author Repeatitis is a disease I have succumbed to on more than one occasion, and I didn't want to catch it again. But the title was enough to reassure me that I was safe in Stegner's hands. And he didn't disappoint me.

Now, I intend to make up for lost time; I've acquired several more of his books, and I intend to dole them out as treats for myself throughout 2009. Next up is The Big Rock Candy Mountain to be followed by A Shooting Star and All the Little Live Things.

In Angle of Repose, we meet a lovely young woman who has had a refined upbringing, been educated in the arts, and is ready to begin her adult life. She accepts a marriage proposal from a young man who is an engineer for a mining company. His livelihood takes them to the outreaches of American civilization. Her upbringing hasn't prepared her for the comparatively spartan, and at times primitive, existence they share.

Yet, she thrives in drawing the lives around her. Her publishing friends back East buy her work, and she affords readers an eye to a life they would not glimpse otherwise.

The story is told to us by the grandson, who is writing his grandparents' story as a way to escape the realities of his own life as an invalid with a progressively debilitating disease. Stegner's characters compel us as we weave back and forth between the current day and the days gone by.

A fascinating story with heartbreaking relationships--I couldn't put it down.

Crossing to Safety — Review by Carole

Wallace Stegner's lovely book Crossing to Safety explores the friendship between two couples that forms during the Depression and continues through the decades until death intrudes. Larry and Sally are a young couple starting out their married life in 1937. They pull into the college town where Larry will begin teaching college; they meet Charity and Sid and suddenly they are part of a bigger world than they previously inhabited.

Stegner's turn of phrase and compelling imagery put you in a time and place that you have to shake your head when you look up from your book to remind yourself that you are not really there. "There" could be a midwestern college town in Wisconsin, a mountain camp in Vermont, or a piazza in Italy.

The quote that inspires the book is from Henry Adams, "Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man." Several key scenes explore this notion. Best-laid plans and all of that. It's each character's reaction to the loss of order and the onset of chaos in their lives that keep you turning the pages.

I think my very favorite part is where Larry as narrator relates to us that this is the story of a friendship. As a writer he recognizes that this is the point where the story should encounter some drama such as an affair or something, but he tells us that this isn't that kind of story.

Not a new book, Crossing to Safety was new to me. I hadn't read Stegner before, and I will definitely give his other books a read. I’m still mulling over the significance of the title. If someone who has read it wants to give me some insights, I’d love to hear what you have to say. Who is Crossing to Safety? Where is that?