Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

I know I promised that I was going to finish Wuthering Heights as my personal summer reading challenge, and I'm reading it, really, I am. The more I read, the more I remember why I quit reading it all those other times. I cannot think of less likable characters than Cathy and Heathcliff. Simply can't think of any. As I was slogging through Cathy's marriage to Linton and Heathcliff's anguish about it, I kept thinking, "these two don't deserve to be happy." And I gather that they don't become so (well, Cathy's already dead, which is about where I've always quit reading. I don't know yet what becomes of Heathcliff).

But beyond that, I finished Angle of Repose a day or two ago. This book was a "Read Cheyenne" pick or some city-wide reading rah-rah like that cooked up by the local Barnes and Noble to sell mass market titles. As I was looking at it and paying for it, two different people in the store mentioned that the language Stegner uses is just so beautiful. This did not give me much encouragement as to the quality of the story. In fact it raised my suspicions that "beautiful language" might be code for "boring."

The beginning was a bit boring. But I got absorbed in the story of a fictional marriage that a fictional character is writing, using correspondence, newspaper clippings, and historical events, all fictional as well. The main character, confined to a wheelchair, is delving into the story of his grandparents marriage during the late half of the nineteenth century. The man and woman are not a perfect match, but start out promisingly enough. As they come up against numerous obstacles trying to make a living in the US western frontier, they have more difficulty fulfilling the promises of their marriage contract.

Although I think the ending was not as strong as the rest of the story, I left the story thinking about what can be forgiven between two people who are making a life together. Stenger's narrator juxtaposes his grandparents' marriage of the late 1800s with two relationships in1970, his own marriage in which his wife left him as he became sicker, and the free-love non-marriage of a young woman who works as his secretary. Although the two latter are clearly in trouble, the narrator makes inferences and connects events until he shows that perhaps the former was not as placid as it seemed.

Another thing I liked about this book was its westward expansion setting. Like the Little House books, this book set up problems of surviving in a wild place and then showed how people solved them. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I like it.

Overall, a fine way to spend a few days, engrossed with characters who are young, pretty much in love, and poised to accomplish great things. As they slide toward their angle of repose, their story raised questions for me about what to expect and what to demand of myself and my life.