Recapitulation was the sequel to Big Rocky Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner with both books purported to be autobiographical in nature although fictional accounts. We had last seen Bruce Mason over forty-five years ago when he had returned to Salt Lake City as a young man for the funeral of his father, Harry Mason. This time Mason has returned for the last time to finalize the funeral arrangements for his aunt. As he walks around the city, he is confronted with many memories and a lot of unfini...

Stay away from this book if you are young. I can’t see a reader under 30 years of age relating to this story. But if you are in your mid-forties or older, you might like it. Recapitulation will certainly make you uncomfortable to learn that there are universal truths about the way we remember and interpret our own pasts. Or maybe you will find that comforting in an uncomfortable way.Recapitulation is a sequel—if a book written more than 35 years later can be considered a sequel—to Stegner’s T...

Wallace Stegner is one of my favorite authors, and I thoroughly enjoyed his novel The Big Rock Candy Mountain (TBRCM). For a number of years I did not realize that Recapitulation existed as a sequel to TBRCM, and when I did learn this, I was quite excited about the reading opportunity ahead of me. Prior to reading Recapitulation, however, I browsed some of the reviews and saw their description of the novel as very introspective, so I began reading Recapitulation with some trepidation as to wheth...

This is like a coda written forty years after the symphony. If you haven't read The Big Rock Candy Mountain, I suggest you do so. Then, while it is still fresh in your mind, read Recapitulation. It fills in details left out of the first book and lets you get to know "Brucie" a lot better as he struggles through puberty and beyond in Salt Lake City. If you've grown attached to the Mason family through The Big Rock Candy Mountain, you'll find yourself wanting even more, as I did. Bruce Mason retur...

As an ardent admirer of Wallace Stegner, I was thrilled to learn that he has written a sequel to "The Big Rock Candy Mountain". Whereas there is no candy in his earlier book, there is a surfeit of recall in "Recapitulation". Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake, the city of his youth, to bury his paternal aunt, a relative he barely knows and for whom he feels no affection. He is initially "flooded with delighted recollection" but soon finds himself mired in memories of the last 45 years. The young b...

Another beautiful book by Stegner. I enjoyed spending time with Bo Mason again. I’m going to read Big Rock Candy Mountain again, this book reminded me of what a great read it was. I also plan to ready my favorite, Crossing to Safety for the second time.

I feel like this book was written for me. But that's only partially due to the fact that it's the story of a man returning to his boyhood home of Salt Lake City after a long absence, and I began reading it on my first visit to Salt Lake in nearly four years. There were so many references to the city and its surrounds and its culture that I can't imagine anyone who hadn't grown up along the Wassatch Front to even comprehend it. When Stegner describes an advancing thunderstorm as seen from the Sal...

“What is an event? What constitutes an experience? Are we what we do, or do we do what we are?”In this book, Wallace Stegner returns to one of his characters from The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Bruce is the sole survivor of the Mason family. It is 1977, and he is now a retired diplomat. He has returned to Salt Lake City, where he spent his teenage years, to arrange his aunt’s funeral. He looks back on his adolescence, coming to terms with his regrets and painful past. We meet his abusive father, l...

Bruce Mason spent his life carrying an awful load of emotional baggage.Forty five years after the events in The Big Rock Candy Mountain Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City for an aunt’s funeral. His presence in Salt Lake City unleashes a torrent of memories. The city has changed a great deal, but wherever he goes he finds himself confronted by his past.That is as much as I’ll say of the plot in order not to spoil it for those who wish to read these two novels about the Mason family. The writin...

This is a good book, but not great like "The Big Rock Candy Mountain." It's only half the length, but felt twice as long. I wasn't compelled to read on like I was with the earlier book. I would definitely read "Big Rock..." first to get to know the characters. "Recapitulation" fills in gaps from the earlier book, told in flashbacks. The character has returned to Salt Lake City 45 years after leaving, looks up old haunts and the memories come flooding back. I was disappointed in the one item from...

I savor Stegner's work and this book particularly so beautifully and aptly describes Salt Lake City which is where I was born and continue to live. Though I read it long ago, I still remember rereading sentences for their beauty and nostalgia. This is a small little book I will reread.

As Utah born and a lifelong admirer of Stegner, I was way overdue for reading this very moving and stunningly beautiful narration of life in Salt Lake City over the course of decades. I so admire his powers of description and his analyses of human motivation. It is fitting closure to Big Rock Candy Mountain.

The perfect case for a 3.5-star rating. Stegner loses focus a bit in the first half of "Recapitulation" but saves things nicely in the second half, so I bumped this up. His prose is typically fine, and late in his life Stegner wrote old characters better than just about anybody. His protagonist here, the boy from "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" now a diplomat on the down side of his life on this earth, is less crotchety than usual for Stegner but still is a fine study. Here, in contrast to several...

I was first introduced to this wonderful author with his classic, Big Rock Candy Mountain. The same characters of a boy and his parents continue in this work, as the now grown Bruce Mason, returns home to Salt Lake City following the death of an aunt - the last of his living family.Stegner is a master of prose. His lyrical writing style gently carries you into the world of Mason's past, hovering around the year 1929. Amazingly, despite the era, Stegner's foray into his character's thoughts and e...

This was the second book in Stegner's semi-autobiographical novels and follows The Big Rock Candy Mountain. It was written 45 years after the first and picks up where the first one leaves off, except in flashbacks from an older Bruce Mason (Stegner) as he returns to Salt Lake City for his aunt's funeral. Although his writing is as gorgeous as usual, the story bogs down, particularly in the first half. Mason is in college and then in law school as the story progresses through a failed romance, hi...

I feel like if I had read this right after Big Rock Candy Mountain I might have given it five stars. With a clearer memory of that book, I think I might have felt like this was more of a continuation/completion than a....well....a recapitulation.But maybe that was the point. It is interesting to think about someone telling the same story at different points in their life and how the tellings would be different.

This is an apt sequel to Big Rock Candy Mountain, though I didn’t like it as well. Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City after 45 years away and wanders about the city in a haze of memories, filling in bits of the Mason family story. At heart it is a book about the way your past is always a part of you and yet you can never really go back. The highlights for me were the beautiful portrayals of the geography — they speak to my Utah-born soul.

Favorite quotes from Recapitulation:"But Bruce Mason walked double. Inside him, moving with the same muscles and feeling with the same nerves and sweating through the same pores, went a thin brown youth, volatile, impulsive, never at rest, not so much a person as a possibility, or a bundle of possibilities: subject to enthusiasm and elation and exuberance and occasional great black moods, stubborn, capable of scheming but often astonished by consequences, a boy vulnerable to wonder, awe, worship...

I'm not sure what to think about this book. On one hand it's as well written as anything that Stegner has written, but on the other hand reading this book feels like reading a confession. It's an intensely private book, an exposed raw nerve, and in reading it I more than once got the impression that writing this must have been a painful experience, like digging into flesh to extract a buried thorn that though it has healed over, still causes pain. In this way, it wasn't a pleasant read; too voye...

A coda to “Big Rock Candy Mountain” that was also a kind of “dear john” letter to Salt Lake City after ghosting the town. The nostalgia favors pain over sentiment. I was ambivalent toward Bruce Mason at the end of BRCM, but the end of this book and the parallels drawn with his father made me sad that he continued to runaway. All of the reliving of the past made no difference to a man who hadn’t learned the lessons of the failure of his mother’s life. The Mormon wedding scene is practically ethno...

I’ve read a lot of books by Wallace Stegner and liked them very much. This was not my favorite. Neither the plot nor the characters was particularly interesting.

Although the story is not one of Stegner's most compelling, in my opinion, the writing is exquisite.

Two years ago, I had an experience that mirrored the plot of Wallace Stegner’s Recapitulation. After a long absence, I travelled back to my childhood neighborhood for a memorial service much like the journey of Bruce Mason, the novel’s central character, who returned to Salt Lake City for his aunt’s funeral. Like Mason’s visit, my trip aroused many childhood recollections, including some painful remembrances. So, when I read Recapitulation, it created new memories for me (a strange memory of m...

I should have liked this book more. I anticipated the sequel to “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” as I so badly wanted to know what happened to Bruce. I could certainly relate to the setting in Salt Lake City- as I could picture most of the landmarks, streets and buildings he described. I was also interested in his frequent references to the “Mormon” church and culture. I also could certainly relate to the theme of returning to where one experienced losing their first love, as I had a similar experi...

Anyone choosing to read "Recapitulation" is advised to read Stegner's The Big Rock Candy Mountain first before tackling this sequel with occurs some 45 years later. Bruce Mason, the sole survivor or a dysfunctional family, returns to Salt Lake City (the city of his youth), to bury an Aunt. Before the funeral, he revisits his youthful haunts and reminisces about prior relationships: his parents and brother, school friends, his only love (Nola); he reflects on things that were and things that coul...

This novel was written some 35 years after Stegner wrote Big Rock Candy Mountain, and it is a return to the same characters and some of the themes of the first book. These were both based on Stegner's own family and tell the stories of his parents and brother--and himself, as Bruce. Now Bruce returns to Salt Lake in 1977 and notices all the changes since he left in 1932--also does a lot of remembering, and coming to terms with himself, his friends and especially his parents.I don't know if he in...

This book is a sequel to The Big Rock Candy Mountain. It was good to get some more closure on those characters. These two books are based on Wallace Stegner's real life, although they are fiction and the names are changed. His father was hard to read about in both books, because he was harsh, unloving, and abusive. His mother was a long-suffering, kind woman. Their life was dysfunctional, and it sometimes broke my heart to read about it. I loved the part where his mom signed him up for a tennis

Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel to tell us that we can't go home again. In Recapitulation Wallace Stegner tells us why, when we do go home again, we're probably better off remembering the people and places and times but letting the past remain past. Bruce Mason returns to Salt Lake City 45 years after he left it as a 20 year old. Now he returns to preside over his aunt's burial. The occasion stirs to mind the past--filled with a mixture of longing and disgust. While home again Bruce intends to look u...

After reading BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN, I read RECAPITULATION, which is the return of Bruce Mason to Salt Lake City after many years. There is so much history of Mason in BIG ROCK, that I can't say how this book would stand on its own. Having had the fortune of reading BIG ROCK first, RECAPITULATION is so compelling. It is as if the wind turned the pages for me.Stegner reminds us that our lives, nor those of others can be judged in a meeting; rather it takes the understanding of generations to be...

This book managed to be a coming of age tale of a teenage boy AND a reconciling of a man's past. After 40+ years a well known, successful diplomat returns to home Utah to bury his aunt. I loved the language and imagery, especially at the beginning when he is walking the street, contrasting the old memories with the changed surroundings. Unfortunately, this books theme is mostly about the boy's sexual and emotional growth. There is one scene that was down right vulgar (like listening to crass boy...