Rating: 
Summary: IT ALMOST BROKE MY HEART
Review: "On the Big Rock Candy Mountain
Where the cops have wooden legs,
And the handouts grow on bushes,
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs,
Where the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the cinder dicks are blind
I am a gonna go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
And the wind don't blow
On the Big Rock Candy Mountain"Wallace Stegner is such a great storyteller and I love his writing so much that before the year has ended I will have most of his books in my library. Mr. Stegner delves so deeply into the characters of this book, enabling us to feel their inner wounds and emotions as well as their determination to fight all challenges for the betterment of their nomadic life. We become close to Bo Mason who is the chief character along with his wife Elsa, Bruce and Chet. Stegner shows the length a husband will go to acquire comfort and food for his family. Â He allows us to see to what end Bo Mason would go, and so close to death's door, all for his family's sake. There is a lot of love shown in this story , but there also is a lot of bitterness, self pity, ruthlessness, anger and illness. It is all about the human condition and what we yearn for that is sometime so hard to come by and so far away. Stegner fans will not be disappointed by this book. Heather Marshall 27/06/04
Rating:
Summary: The Universal in the West
Review: 'Big Rock Candy Mountain' is the story of ambition and security, of restlessness and comfort, of expansion and insularity. In Bo Mason, the book presents te expansive here who cannot be tied down. It presents the restless dreamer whose only motive is to find the pace that is better. It presented him as the daring rogue that men envy and women find irresistible. It also presents him as the husband of Elsa and the father of Chester and Bruce. It presents him as the husband who deeply loves his wife and sons but whose instinctive drives forces him to hurt them deeply. The book presents Elsa, Bo's wife, whose dream is the security of a loving family but who is ineluctably attracted to the daring bo who can free her from a life of restriction and drudgery. In short this is a book about the conflict within the human soul that pits the need for independence and adventure against the desire for security and safety. It is set in the Canadian and American west at the time of the westward expansion. It is a book about real people that delve deeply into the generic human condition. Its characters are real and finely detailed yet it is more than just an account of a particular family in a particular time. It explores grand themes an yet it true to the motivations of its characters. It is a book that finds the universal in the particular and the instant in eternity. It is a book that will be remembered.
Rating:
Summary: Boom and bust
Review: Big Rock Candy Mountain is one of the most beautiful and powerful novels I've read. Bo and Elsa Mason are two characters that are so memorable and vivid, you feel as if you truly know them. Stegner is a literary master and one of the most talented and prolific writers of all time. If you enjoy reading about the West, then this book is a necessity. What is so wonderful about this novel is the reality of it - all the characters and events feel so real. You will not be able to put it down. My sister, who doesn't read many novels, stayed in our hotel room to read this book while we were in Italy. What a testament to the greatness of this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable
Review: I had never heard of Wallace Stegner, but the title, Big Rock Candy Mountain, caught my eye. I'm glad it did. This book is absolutely unforgettable. From the opening scene as young, innocent Elsa fights nausea and goes valiantly westward to escape her joyless father to the last closing moments that you read slowly because you don't want the book to end. This is a book that stays with you. The writing is clean and beautiful and brutally honest. The bleak story is as unforgiving as the dry earth the Mason family wanders fruitlessly. The story of the Mason family is the story of America -- hopes destroyed and riches denied. More than the saga of their lives, I was touched by Stegner's deep understanding that, "man is not a static organism to be taken apart and analyzed and classified. A man is movement, motion, a continuum... He runs through his ancestors." At the end of the book, Bruce, the youngest son (and the voice of the author), takes up the psychic mantle of his ancestor's mistakes. As a tribute to his final insights, I paraphrase, "It was a good book to have been along with. It was good to have shared it. Perhaps that was what it meant, all of it."
Rating:
Summary: A Memorable Experience
Review: I read Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose" and liked it very much, so I decided to try this one, his first major novel. I enjoyed this book even more than the later, Pulitzer Prize winning work. "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a more straightforward narrative than "Angle of Repose." It is obviously a memoir of Stegner's own childhood, along with extensive material based loosely on his parents' lives.
Stegner's descriptions of life in the upper western plains during the first two decades of the twentieth century read with an amazing freshness and clarity. The scenes of childhood and family life around the time of the First World War leave unforgettable impressions. The details are lively and crystal clear.
Stegner structures his novel with a sure knack for keeping the reader's interest. He has an instinct for creating tension within discrete episodes, which are well paced throughout the book. You live through blizzards, droughts, an epidemic, and even a car chase with bootleggers. There are also beautiful descriptions of the west and plenty of psychological and ethical dilemmas to ponder.
In some ways this book reminded me of the Nebraska novels of Willa Cather and the works of John Steinbeck. However, the characters in "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" don't always show the nobility of Cather's pioneers; nor are they primarily victims of natural and economic disasters like the Joad family in "The Grapes of Wrath." The people in Stegner's novel make decisions, often tragic ones, and live out the their responsibilities for those decisions not only as they affect themselves, but also as they impact on those around them.
As is widely acknowledged, this novel is about the American Dream - the drive for status, wealth, and easy money -- the golden opportunity just beyond the rainbow. Looking at shows like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" or "The Apprentice," it is easy to see that these beliefs are still alive and well in our popular culture. Stegnar is unambiguous in his condemnation of this mentality. Yet, he expresses his views with compassion and understanding. Stegner describes forces that are integral parts of our heritage and tradition, and he does so in a way that even today should appeal to readers of any political persuasion.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful story of a family's struggles
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed the book and raced out to buy another by Stegman. The book gave a very vivid account of what life in the early 20th century must have been like.
Rating:
Summary: Stegner's "Mountain" of memories.
Review: Reading fiction does not get better than reading Wallace Stegner (1909-1993). His Pulitzer Prize winner, ANGLE OF REPOSE (1971) is my favorite novel, and the earlier BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN (1943) (hereafter "BRCM") is an equally moving book. There is no one-sentence way to summarize Stegner's somewhat autobiographical BRCM. It is as much a novel about family as it is about transience, rootlessness, and a nation that has been "footloose too long" (460). The Masons are a family troubled with tensions. They move frequently throughout the American West in the early 1900s--from North Dakota to Seattle, Salt Lake City to Reno--always in chase of their dreams. As in his other books, Stegner's characters resist description inasmuch as they are often subject to contradiction by their own characteristics. In BRCM, the Masons are no different. Bo Mason is the book's most dominant character, later eclipsed by his son, Bruce. Bo is a bootlegger, haunted all his life "by dreams of quick wealth" (p. 437). As a husband and father, he is miserly, impatient, "easily irritated" and abusive, yet not without "occasional spells of intense good spirits" (p. 437). Feminist readers may have a problem with his wife, Elsa Mason. "Misused" (p. 439) by her husband, Elsa is a "self-sacrificing" and "kindly-wise" wife and mother (p. 442). Despite her husband's faults--and the list is long--Elsa is unceasingly loyal to Bo. Even after "a dozen years of living among bootleggers and pimps and bellhops and all the little scummy riffraff on the edge of the criminal class," Elsa remains untouched by that way of life. "She only gives up her wishes," her son, Bruce notes, "never herself" (p. 447). BRCM is also a father-son story. Stegner shows his reader Bruce's dark and tormented childhood, the hatred he feels toward his father, and Bruce's lifelong attempt to come to terms with his troubled family. "If a man could understand himself and his own family," Bruce reflects, "he'd have a good start toward understanding everything he'd ever need to know" (p. 436). Bo's domination of his son even after his death, and the "incurable damage" done to Bruce become the subjects of Stegner's sequel to BRCM, RECAPITULATION (1979). BRCM is also about finding one's home, establishing roots, and living life authentically in a nation otherwise obsessed with finding "the Big Rock Candy Mountain," where "the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs" (p. 461), a land of futile dreams. We find Bruce questioning, "so when . . .do we get enough sense to quit looking for something for nothing?" Although it moves with powerful feelings, BRCM is by no means a "feel-good" novel. Rather, it is a "feel-real" novel full of conflict. Stegner's writing here is honest, rich with human experience, and marked with many memorable moments. G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: One of the best!
Review: Stegner was at his best in this novel. At various times, you love and hate all the characters. It's more than a book about choices; it's about people at their best and their worst. Recapitulation is the followup to this novel. Anyone who liked The Big Rock Candy Mountain must read Recapitulation!
Rating:
Summary: a great book from a great writer
Review: Stegner's writing is compelling and vivid. It is so vivid that I considered putting the book down and starting something else. The hideous, heart-wrenching event involving Bruce's horse was almost too much for me to handle. It made me truly dislike Elsa and detest the father. If there is any weakness in this book, it comes from the lack of appealing characters. Bruce is the only one I felt any compassion for, and my hope that he would survive the abuse and turmoil was my motivation for continuing the book. This is wonderful writing. However, I found it very depressing.
Rating: 
Summary: The Big Rock Candy Mountain 1.5 stars
Review: The Big Rock Candy Mountain is a novel writen by
Wallace Stegner. I have heard many great things
about Stegner's work, so i picked this up with
much anticipation. Perhaps his other books are
much better, but this book is not good. And when
I say that I'm being very gracious.
The story centers around a family of four, Bo,
his wife, Elsa, and their two sons Chester and Bruce.
The novel follows them from place to place throughout
America, about their poverty, and overall faliure.
The fundamental problem with the book is this: You're
supposed to feel bad for the family and their bad luck.
But you don't because the author would rather give you
pointless detail (while ignoring important detail) than
help you get to know and like the characters. By the time
that their lives are ruined you don't even like any of the
characters. If the author had spent more time developing
a mental relationship between you and this family than the
book could pull the right strings. Then there is also the
question of possibility. Is it really possible for a person
(Bo the husband) to be naturally good at absolutly everything?
And pushing it even further is it possible for this person
to not be able to make any money what so ever. In this book
It describest this husband as being a great baseball player
(yes he's hurt, but why not become a coach or something?), a nearly flawless hunter, and many other things. Yet he remains broke for thirty years? Also the seemingly dramatic
parts of this book are more funny than dramatic.
Wallace Stegner may have written many other good books.
Through his writing i can see some potential. But in this
book his potential even as a good writer only shows when he's
"in a groove". When he's in a groove he seems to have a
tallent for writing, but when he's not, his sentences are long and jumbled and often don't even make sense.
If you don't believe me then here is the first sentence of the
book just to prove it to you:
"The train was rocking through wide open country before Elsa was able to put off the misery of leaving and reach out for the freedom and release that were hers now."
See what i mean? I'm sure that a writer such as Dickens or
Hemingway never put down a sentence that confusing.
For that sliver of potential i award this book it's one and a half stars, but keep in mind, this may be the worst book i've ever read.
|
