Crossing to Safety (Modern Library) (Modern Library Classics)

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Two young couples meet and quickly find they have much in common: Charity and Sally are both pregnant and their husbands, Sid and Larry, have jobs in the English department at the University of Wisconsin. He is saying that quiet, private lives, such as those lived by Charity, Sid, Sally and Larry, have none of the pizzazz that popular novels seem to need.

But apart from the themes/ideas, I loved this book mainly because I loved these four people and took such pleasure in their company. The narrator of this novel, Larry Morgan, at one point says to his wife, “But if I’m going to set the literary world on fire, the only way to do it is to rub one word against the other. She is strong and long-suffering, first as a pregnant faculty wife and later as the victim of polio, and seemingly without personality flaws. As unlikely as the friendship between the two couples may seem, it may also appear improbable that Sid and Charity are locked together in marriage. About the things that we start to lose, no matter how successful we are, how well we plan, how cleanly we live.She invites them to their next party, and Larry is stunned by the magnificent picture the Langs make as they answer the door. Charity bubbles with friendliness and generosity when she and Sid meet Larry and Sally, and intervenes to make their lives easier in hard times, always pushing aside thanks.

And despite the fact that this is told from Larry’s point of view, it is the Langs that sit in the spotlight.The friendship, though, is not organic, at least not in the way of your first best friend, or your high school pals, or the guys you ran with in college. For me it was too close to reality having witnessed a very similar relationship within my own family, another Charity type who was just an abusive and self-centred bully as far as I’m concerned. The shaking was coming from deep inside my body and soul, where Wallace Stegner had infused me with words and images that caused me to tremble with recognition.

Crossing to safety chronicles the 35-year friendship ( amicitia) between two couples, which started in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1937. I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the nation in which I live. Our voices and breaths went up and got mixed with the shadows of trees and the bloom of arc lights and the glitter of stars.There they form an unlikely friendship with the Langs whose backgrounds are worlds apart from their own. And I guess that’s what Stegner wants us to reflect upon, the nature of friendship and marriage, the sacrifices as well as the rewards. Does it seem ironic that a book I’ve awarded a full pentad of stars is also the cause of great frustration?

While Larry and Sid were junior colleagues in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin, their wives met at a mixer that led to the alliance. The trees, the smells, the weather changes, the variants in the sky – I know them all intimately from reading this book. I can see that place in Vermont right now if I close my eyes and shut out the murmur of the television in the other room, the sound of a snowblower across the street. Wallace Stegner, who offers this scene near the end of his 1987 novel Crossing to Safety, has Larry, his narrator, address Hallie.

Where are speed, noise, ugliness, everything that makes us who we are and makes us recognize ourselves in fiction? I spent time in an iron lung with my dearest friend by my side assuring me that life was worth living even though I wished it was over. Re-visiting that time and place is dangerous, not because it’s an idealised past which doesn’t measure up to scrutiny, but because it’s a forgotten past which suddenly re-emerges with the emotional force of death.