How long is it?
672 pages in the Vintage 2014 paperback edition.
Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction
Angle of Repose
CanonicalModern Library 100 Best NovelsReading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 73 / 100High
- Length
- 672 pagesVintage · 2014
- Reading time
- 13 h 30 minat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Slow
- Emotional intensity
- 4 / 5
About 13 h 30 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 27 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
In 1970, historian Lyman Ward returns to his grandparents' house in Grass Valley, California, his mobility restricted by bone disease and his marriage broken down. Working through his grandmother Susan's letters, he reconstructs the life of an artist who left New York to follow her mining-engineer husband, Oliver, across the nineteenth-century West. Makeshift homes and financial uncertainty test their marriage, while Susan struggles with the distance between her ambitions and her circumstances.
Reader notes
Reflective and richly descriptive, the novel alternates family history with Lyman's present and his doubts about what the letters can tell him. Domestic detail and questions about marriage occupy long stretches; sexual intimacy remains discreetly offstage.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Descriptive · Essayistic · Lyrical
- Tone
- Intimate · Melancholic · Reflective · Wistful
- Structure
- Braided · Dual timeline
- Driven by
- Character · Relationships · Voice
- Point of view
- First person · Mixed viewpoints
- Setting
- American West · Grass Valley, California
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 4 / 5
- Ideas
- 4 / 5
- Structure
- 4 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 2 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Family
- Isolation
- Knowledge and truth
- Legacy
- Marriage
- Memory
Content notes
- Violence
- None
- Sexual content
- Mild
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Mild
- Abuse
- None
- Self-harm or suicide
- Mild
Standing and awards
Canonical
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1972
- Modern Library 100 Best Novels
- Penguin Classics
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Vintage · 2014 · Paperback. ISBN 9781101872765.
How long does it take to read Angle of Repose?
About 13 hours 30 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 672-page Vintage edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Wallace Stegner
Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) was an American novelist, historian, and environmentalist, often called the Dean of Western Writers. His work joined an interest in the American West and its history with close attention to marriage, friendship, inheritance, and memory. His descriptive, essayistic fiction often uses reflective narrators who recognize the limits of what they can know. In Angle of Repose, a historian reconstructs his grandparents’ marriage and Western life from incomplete records; in Crossing to Safety, a narrator looks back across decades of friendship between two couples. These retrospective structures allowed Stegner to examine how uncertainty and self-interest enter accounts of the past, whether those accounts concern a family, a marriage, or a friendship.
If you liked this
Edition and details
- Publisher
- Vintage
- Publication year
- 2014
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 672
- ISBN
- 9781101872765
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 1971
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Novel · Literary Fiction · Historical Fiction · Literary fiction · Family saga · Psychological fiction
- Editions
- 16
- Languages
- 2 (English, Unspecified)