Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner
I picked this up because I recall reading Stegner's Angle of Repose and thinking it was fabulous. A while back I read Crossing to Safety and liked it though did not think it was up to snuff with Angle. Big Rock Candy Mountain appealed to me because I wanted something by someone I thought I could count on to give me a good read and for whatever reason I heard the song echoing in the background when I saw the name of the book. (It doesn't take much to send me down the road of reading a book.)
In some ways, the book did not disappoint. The intro started out strong and I pulled the following quote: "Books that render great insight may provide it gradually over time or with great suddenness. Often the best novels don't completely reveal themselves the first time through, demanding to be understood at the right age and state of mind, in readings separated by the passage of years." This from Roger Stone who wrote the introduction. Yes! I thought! That's exactly right! The books I love that I have read multiple times have a designation in my "ratings" system "SUTMR" meaning "stands up to multiple readings" into which I would put all of my most favorite books...Hunger Games, East of Eden, Outlander, Jacob Have I Loved...and they do indeed mean different things to you at different times in your life. With those words to get me started, I was totally psyched to dive into this books.
Alas, I was to be disappointed. I mean, the book was ok. The writing was classic Stegnar: beautiful. But I wasn't in love with the story, I did not find the characters particularly compelling and by the time I hit page 400 all I wanted was for it be over...and I still had close to 200 pages to go. But the writing...by George its beautiful.
In facing nature: "And standing in the yard above his one clean footprint, feeling his own verticality in all that spread of horizontal land, he sensed that as the prairie shrank he grew. He was immense. A little jump would crack his head on the sky; a stride would take him to any horizon."
Home, or lack thereof, was a recurring theme in the book: "A home had to be lived in every day, every month, every year for a long time, till it was worn like an old shoe and fitted the comfortable curvatures of your life." And likewise, the challenges of not having one: "It was not permanence alone that made what the Anglo-Saxons called home, he thought. It was continuity, the flux of fashion and decoration moving in and out again as minds and purses altered, but always within the framework of the established and recognizable outline." and another: "If one subscribed to the idea of home at all, one would insist on an attic for the family history to hide in."
The woman/mother in this story could have used a #MeToo# movement in her life. As she listens to what she knows is a bad idea spewing from her man's mouth and suspends her disagreement to allow him his moment: "He opened up the future like a Christmas package for her delight, and he was so delighted in himself that she couldn't be otherwise." And later, when she had spent a lifetime giving way to her husband's often foolish lead: "For all her yielding and her self-sacrificing, there is something in her that doesn't give when its pushed at. She only gives up her wishes, never herself."
Anyway, lovely though the words were, by the end of the book there were page after pages of wanderings that I couldn't follow and didn't have the energy to piece my way through. It was depressing and ended badly and though I can't say I'm sorry I read it, it certainly wasn't my favorite book of the year. If you want to enjoy Stegner, read Angle of Repose and skip right on past this old chestnut.
Rating: #7: Eh.
In some ways, the book did not disappoint. The intro started out strong and I pulled the following quote: "Books that render great insight may provide it gradually over time or with great suddenness. Often the best novels don't completely reveal themselves the first time through, demanding to be understood at the right age and state of mind, in readings separated by the passage of years." This from Roger Stone who wrote the introduction. Yes! I thought! That's exactly right! The books I love that I have read multiple times have a designation in my "ratings" system "SUTMR" meaning "stands up to multiple readings" into which I would put all of my most favorite books...Hunger Games, East of Eden, Outlander, Jacob Have I Loved...and they do indeed mean different things to you at different times in your life. With those words to get me started, I was totally psyched to dive into this books.
Alas, I was to be disappointed. I mean, the book was ok. The writing was classic Stegnar: beautiful. But I wasn't in love with the story, I did not find the characters particularly compelling and by the time I hit page 400 all I wanted was for it be over...and I still had close to 200 pages to go. But the writing...by George its beautiful.
In facing nature: "And standing in the yard above his one clean footprint, feeling his own verticality in all that spread of horizontal land, he sensed that as the prairie shrank he grew. He was immense. A little jump would crack his head on the sky; a stride would take him to any horizon."
Home, or lack thereof, was a recurring theme in the book: "A home had to be lived in every day, every month, every year for a long time, till it was worn like an old shoe and fitted the comfortable curvatures of your life." And likewise, the challenges of not having one: "It was not permanence alone that made what the Anglo-Saxons called home, he thought. It was continuity, the flux of fashion and decoration moving in and out again as minds and purses altered, but always within the framework of the established and recognizable outline." and another: "If one subscribed to the idea of home at all, one would insist on an attic for the family history to hide in."
The woman/mother in this story could have used a #MeToo# movement in her life. As she listens to what she knows is a bad idea spewing from her man's mouth and suspends her disagreement to allow him his moment: "He opened up the future like a Christmas package for her delight, and he was so delighted in himself that she couldn't be otherwise." And later, when she had spent a lifetime giving way to her husband's often foolish lead: "For all her yielding and her self-sacrificing, there is something in her that doesn't give when its pushed at. She only gives up her wishes, never herself."
Anyway, lovely though the words were, by the end of the book there were page after pages of wanderings that I couldn't follow and didn't have the energy to piece my way through. It was depressing and ended badly and though I can't say I'm sorry I read it, it certainly wasn't my favorite book of the year. If you want to enjoy Stegner, read Angle of Repose and skip right on past this old chestnut.
Rating: #7: Eh.
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