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Gretchen Wing asked this question about Recapitulation:
Anyone out there read this recently? I'm a huge Stegner fan, but this book somehow escaped my notice until last month. I would love to have a virtual book club chat with anybody about it.
Dan A good read. Probably because of the book's relative brevity, Recapitulation is a little lacking in the breadth of literary development of Big Rock Ca…mǰA good read. Probably because of the book's relative brevity, Recapitulation is a little lacking in the breadth of literary development of Big Rock Candy Mountain, but still worth the read. I suppose the book could work as a good Stegner stand-alone read. But to fully appreciate it, Big Rock Candy Mountain is almost certainly pre-requisite reading. Bruce Mason, Bo & Elsa's son in Big Rock Candy Mountain, recalls some of his adolescent experiences in Recapitulation--ones we didn't know in Big Rock Candy Mountain. Careful attention is required to mark the sometimes seamless (blurred) segues between present narrative and recollection. The reader understands in Recapitulation that Bruce's life, though fraught with father-son animosity, was also about the struggle to decide his own path in life. From Bruce's perspective, there is a complexity of emotion and recollection in Recapitulation that is only hinted at in Big Rock Candy Mountain. There is also a sort of healing of memories in Recapitulation that could not be imagined in Big Rock Candy Mountain. Through Bruce's remembrances the reader begins to see that flawed as our all childhoods are (even the most painful ones), flawed even as we believe our parents were, each of them was marked by some beauty, some redeeming quality, that is probably best accepted, if even grudgingly. A good retrospective narrative to describe how any of us is compelled to make meaning of our pasts.(less)
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Recapitulation
by Wallace Stegner
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