All the Little Live Things [Hardcover]

Wallace Stegner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1979

Award-winning and bestselling author Wallace Stegner takes on the hippy generation in a novel of "crackling vividness."--The New York Times Book Review. A bearded young cultist invades the lives of a retired literary agent and his wife after the death of their wayward son.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Retirees Joseph and Ruth Allston find their placid, rural California life disrupted by a hippie who builds a treehouse on their property and by a young married couple tragically affected by pregnancy and cancer. "Quite simply, a beautiful novel--strong, moving, wise, funny--as topical as today's newspaper," said PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Review

Award-winning and bestselling author Wallace Stegner takes on the hippy generation in ''a novel of crackling vividness.'' --The New York Times Book Review

Timely and timeless. . . . Will hold any reader to its last haunting page. --Chicago Tribune --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 345 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (October 1, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803241100
• ISBN-13: 978-0803241107
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,109,859 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Introduction to Wallace Stegner, June 17, 1999

By 

William Cuthbertson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All the Little Live Things (Contemporary American Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)

Though it's moral issues are presented a little more black-and-white than in his two more widely acclaimed novels, "Crossing to Safety" and "Angle of Repose," this short novel can be read successfully on a variety of levels. It showcases many of Stegner's recurring ideas: living consciously in an increasingly unethical environment; suicide as an easy escape from responsibility; and how the choice is never between "life and death" as much as it a decision about how you want your life to effect those around you. But analysis aside, I love this book for Marian Catlan, one of Stegner's most intricate women yet. This novel is my personal favorite of all Stegners and one of the best novels I've ever read.

80 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Literature, June 30, 2000

By 

Paul McGrath (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All the Little Live Things (Contemporary American Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)

The first analogy which came to mind after reading this book was that it was like being in some kind of a heavyweight boxing match. You read the book and you take a pounding and you set down the book and you're dazed. The emotional involvement is almost that physical. The second analogy, which I thought of later, was that of looking at an expensive diamond. You see a new depth of beauty every time you turn it in a different direction.

It is the story of a 64 year-old man, Joe Allston, who moves to a five acre ranch in what is apparently an area south of San Jose, California. He is retired, and he moves there with his wife to escape everyday life, and enjoy his remaining days in peace. It is 1967. But two events occur which shake him out of his quietude. The first is the sudden and unexpected appearance of Peck, a 24 year-old hippie, who asks them if he can camp out on their property. Reluctantly, and out of a sense of repressed guilt over the death of his own 38 year-old son three years earlier, Joe agrees. The second event is the appearance of a new neighbor, Marian, a 30ish woman, with her husband and child. Joe is smitten by her beauty and charm and immediately--in a purely platonic way--falls in love with her.

They have a lengthy discussion on the first day he meets her. He wants to know what she is planning to do with the property, which has gone untended for many years, and she tells him that she's going to do--nothing. She loves nature the way it is, she says, and relishes the wild, untamed, natural beauty of it. He tells her about poison oak, stink weeds, snakes and other vermin, and says to her that it is not possible to not want to change nature. He tells her about the flea-ridden gopher he had killed that morning on his property. "Do you think, for one minute, that that gopher would not rid itself of that vermin if it was able to?"

Joe is unable to change her mind, but he has many discussions like this with her, on his back patio, with his wife, in the summer sun. All of them are very charming and intelligent people, and we grow to like them immensely.

Meanwhile, Peck is taking advantage of him: building a treehouse, inviting friends over, and illegally hooking up electricity and water. As this irritant continues, disaster strikes. Marian has cancer, and only a short time to live. And between her and Peck, Joe finally comes to some realizations about himself: he wasn't merely seeking a pleasant retirement, he was instead trying to escape from life itself, and that it cannot be done. One cannot get off the treadmill--life is the treadmill.

It all sounds very simple I suppose, but the book is rich in everything. The characterizations are detailed and complex, and the plot moves as a result of the character's actions. Nothing is contrived. Joe's observations are original, witty and mature, and the conclusion of the story is unbelievably powerful. Stegner aims high and doesn't miss. This is a superb literary achievement, and possibly the finest novel I have ever read.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Magnificent, Memorable Work Of Fiction!, June 13, 2004

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All the Little Live Things (Contemporary American Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)

From the moment I began this extraordinary novel until the last word of the last sentence I was caught-up, as usual, in the richness, the sheer luminosity, of Wallace Stegner's prose. I was also taken, from the first, by Joe Allston, the 64 year-old retired literary agent, main character and narrator of "All The Little Live Things." Allston is one of the most complex characters I have met in literature and for some reason he crept into my heart.

Outwardly a curmudgeon of the first order, he is introspective and ruthlessly honest with himself...and with everyone else. Stegner once said about his writing, "In fiction I think we should have no agenda but to tell the truth." Joe Allston personifies this maxim. He seeks his own truth - the reality behind his feelings and actions. He is aware of his flaws, his resistance to change, his near obsession with the Protestant work ethic and resentment towards those seeking to escape it through alternative lifestyles. He also agonizes over the death of his son and their terribly flawed relationship.

This is a story of relationships, of love, alienation, anger and death and their role in Allston's life and in the human condition. Set in the late 1960s, a time of political unrest, general dissent and back to nature "hippie lifestyles," Joe is bewildered and angered by society's changing mores. He and his wife Ruth have a ranch in the California hills. When a manipulative young man on a motorcycle asks to camp on his land, Joe begrudgingly gives his consent. Another newcomer to Allston's life is the lovely young mother, Marion Catlin, who moves to a nearby house with her husband and child. A hauntingly poignant love story lies at the heart of this novel - the relationship between Joe and this young, pregnant mother. Marion is the daughter he always longed for and fills a void in him that no one has before. Allston describes Marion: "She looks as if she had bloomed into this spring day, she had a tremble on her like young poplar leaves." "She is one of Willie Yeats's glimmering girls, with apples blossoms in her hair, and I admit to a pang. God knows what it is - maybe envy that someone is lucky to have such a daughter." Gorgeous!

The story and characters are so real, so totally believable! And this is no accident - it is due to the author's careful crafting. Every time I read a novel by Wallace Stegner I wind up proclaiming it to be my favorite. "All The Little Live Things" is certainly a favorite and an absolutely glorious work of fiction.
JANA