Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose was an excellent book….and also one of the most hopeless and depressing pieces of work I’ve ever read. It starts out well enough — one can probably expect a degree of hardship in the life of a refined Eastern woman moving out into the late-19th century American West to follow her engineer husband’s work — but it goes downhill from there. And pretty consistently. If I hadn’t already exchanged it for my next Pulitzer, I would probably quote a passage here just to show you how much despair a good author can capture in a paragraph. By the end of the book — despite how wonderfully it was written — I was exhausted.
Perhaps it’s better then that I did take it back before I wrote this. I just wanted it out of my hands so I could move on. It was 557 pages of some of the hardest reading I’ve done to date. Would I recommend it? Absolutely! It’s among my top-tier Pulitzers so far. Just, be ready…
I’m hoping my next book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, will pick me up a bit. I decided on a shorter book — 335 pages — and I’m hoping it’s not as dense emotionally. From the dust cover: “With dazzling energy and insight, Junot Díaz immerses us in the uproarious lives of our hero Oscar, his runaway sister Lola, and their ferocious beauty-queen mother Belicia…” Sounds like a far cry from Stegner, so it’s got that going for it. And just by reading his intro, which goes into the Dominican concept of “fukú” (a curse — intriguingly applied in his intro to the Kennedy family), I think I’m on the right track.
Since this is a shorter, faster-paced book, you should be hearing from me sooner as to how it really turns out…
I’m living vicariously through your book reviews. I’m sitting at Keith’s bedside and don’t think I’ll be strong enough to pick up Angle of Repose any time soon.
I should write a bit more next time. Maybe actually read some reviews to figure out how to actually review a book. In any case, this run of Pulitzers is a fun little adventure and an interesting approach that broadens my scope of reading.
I’m glad you’re with Uncle Keith these days. I’m sure it’s a great comfort to him and the family.
Maybe you shouldn’t read other’s reviews. I like your approach — no agenda, just honesty.
i’d just like to be able to give more content without giving up too much. wondering how other people do that. i’m not inclined to read others’ reviews of anything that i want to read because i don’t read things because of what other people say about it. i try to be as random and surprised as possible. Cassie says “The Goldfinch is a great book,” well, that’s all I need to hear. You liked the Sparrow? Good enough for me. So I guess with Pulitzers, I’m just getting that someone thought it was a decent book. Don’t need to know anything else about it. makes for some interesting reading of things i might not normally ever see.