She plots their route, plans their activities, brooks no arguments, although there certainly are some. Since I finished reading this book about three weeks ago, I've thought a lot about what its central subject actually is. But Stegner succeeds, and with all the wisdom of a life lived (he was 78 at the time) he creates a timeless and convincing classic. I need to recenter my priorities and remember what it can be like to disconnect with electronics and reconnect with humanity.

We meet two couples, Larry and Sally Morgan and Sid and Charity Lang, life-long loyal friends, soul mates, occasional competitors and mutual supporters. Their struggles are the stuff of our everyday existence, but no less important or significant as a result. I spent several hours reading and re-reading this poem today, and wondering why I never sat with it before, to digest and devour it, but only admired it in passing, with Frost always being such a favorite poet of mine. El eje de la novela es Charity, una de esas mujeres fuertes y decididas que le tocó vivir una época en la que las de su sexo tenían muy difícil (más) desarrollar su potencial. To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page.She has great dignity and presence when she is cornered, and when she reads that antique poetry she can bring tears to your eyes. Stegner captures this mood in vivid, luminous prose, which I hope to illustrate through the passage quoted below – it’s a prose style somewhat reminiscent of James’s Salter’s in Light Years. Sid, the wealthy scion, turned out to be the most conflicted – a would-be poet and dreamer sometimes at odds with Charity’s agenda and will. They are lovely people and you like them and all that – but they’re also a compromise to the circumstances of life. Larry Morgan narrates the story, beginning near the end, when he and Sally are grandparents staying in a family cottage at the lake.

The introduction tells us that “Crossing to Safety is a love story…in the sense that it explores private lives. la amistad) Es una relación que no tiene una forma establecida, no hay lazos ni obligaciones, como en el matrimonio o la familia, y no son la ley, ni la propiedad, ni la sangre quienes sostienen la unión; no hay en ella más adhesivo que el aprecio mutuo. Connections to others, and to oneself, abound in the most unlikely places during the most unlikely times.She is probably the least defined of the four, supportive to all, but ultimately the one most in need of the support of her friends. What ever happened to the passion we all had to improve ourselves, live up to our potential, leave a mark on the world? I’ve never had the experience of a “couples” friendship like this, setting out on vacations with one another, bonding over shared pregnancies, or struggling with end of life together. There are certain universal truths in play, but the Langs and the Morgans live very particular, not-very-relatable lives, especially given the context in which the novel plays out. I like books where ‘nothing happens’ although I’ve been put off reading Stoner as it seems very masculine.

Cuatro personas que llegaron a vivir en un paraíso como dos Evas y dos Adanes y en el que no faltó ni la serpiente ni la expulsión.I know these people – not just from the outside but because parts of each one are, or have been parts of me, too – at one point or another in my life. I could wash my hands in the ferns, and when I pick a leaf off a maple branch I get a shower on my head and shoulders. 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. I have to wonder what Stegner has to celebrate about these relationships other than the sheer tenacity of the couples.

I am trying to reread (something I’m not very good at…I’m such a shallow reader) and I named Angle of Repose as one I plan (hope?When you remember today, what will you remember best, the spring countryside, and the company of friends, or Piero’s Christ and that workman with the mangled hand? Wallace Stegner is one of our great national treasures, and Crossing to Safety is a very rich read, a surprising look at the friendship between two couples, four friends. Not settling, not feeling trapped or resentful, but just learning to be OK with your life and appreciating what you have instead of wasting your life obsessing over what you don't have. I'd rather spend it on Charity" (what is it about that line that has the reader continue to 'think' about this? And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.