Crossing to Safety – Wallace Stegner
This was such a fabulous book and I am yet to hear a dissenting voice on how good it is.
Here is the blurb …
When two young couples meet for the first time during the Great Depression, they quickly find they have much in common: Charity Lang and Sally Morgan are both pregnant, while their husbands Sid and Larry both have jobs in the English department at the University of Wisconsin. Immediately a lifelong friendship is born, which becomes increasingly complex as they share decades of love, loyalty, vulnerability and conflict. Written from the perspective of the aging Larry Morgan, Crossing to Safety is a beautiful and deeply moving exploration of the struggle of four people to come to terms with the trials and tragedies of everyday life.
It is beautifully written – understated and simple, but brilliant. It is unusual to read a novel about marriage that isn’t about just starting out or ending in disaster. However, this novel is about more than that – it is about living the good life (in the moral sense), how to contribute to the world, about writing and reading (perhaps that is why all readers like it?), women’s role in the world (Poor Charity has to live vicariously through her husband) and finally it is about what makes a good death and who gets to decide that – the dying or those left behind.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
More reviews …
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/20/books/the-grace-of-old-lovers.html