randis724's review against another edition
4.0
This book is good if you are looking for something slower paced with lots of insights into characters and descriptions of beautiful landscapes.
plan2read's review against another edition
5.0
An almost perfect novel addressing lifespan issues of achievement, compromise, friendship, and survival. This offered the perfect counterpoint to the recent [b:The Interestings|15815333|The Interestings|Meg Wolitzer|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1363979873s/15815333.jpg|21541829] by treading much of the same ground with more subtlety and fewer unrepentant malcontents.
librostace's review against another edition
5.0
This novel is so damn great. It's completely masterful. Themes, language, pacing, overall style. Floors you.
greenej's review against another edition
2.0
I sped happily through this book for the first half or so--I am a sucker for novels that take place within the academic workplace. And Stegner had a nice chatty tone to his coverage of the two couples. As time went on, however, the one-dimensional portrayal of Charity, the nagging, shrewish woman at the center of the book--grew increasingly grating (not to mention sexist). By the end I was relieved to be done with the two couples and to close the book.
ashbandicoot90's review against another edition
4.0
Very impressive. From such quiet, and such melodrama, Stegner somehow writes with such weight and observation. Not poncey, not overly profound... just a delicate riff on the idea of the dreams of youth vs the harsh realities of life that growing old brings.
andrew61's review against another edition
4.0
I think this is a book that I will keep thinking about, it's not dramatic but a very illuminating story about marriage and the curiosity of how a friendship develops and the difference between men and women's friendships . It tells the story of Larry,Sally , charity and Sid who meet in 1938 Wisconsin university as English teachers , they form a close quartet but the relationships are very uneven. The end is sad as Larry is looking back 40(?) years on and it touches on each spouses needs of each other. As I say I think I'll think about this book often.
demottar's review against another edition
5.0
Wallace Stegner's last novel is really a treat to savor. The writing is so beautiful and even funny at times, and while nothing much happens in the book, the story of the friendship between the Morgans and the Langs is riveting to me for it's truthfulness and honesty.
Larry Morgan pretty much sums up the whole magic of this book with this line: "How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these? Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect? Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends? Where are the hatreds, the political ambitions, the lust for power? Where are speed, noise, ugliness, everything that makes us who we are and makes us recognize ourselves in fiction?"
That "high life" described is definitely not in this book and rightly so. Instead, you see a faithful and quiet portrait of two couples' marriages, their friendship with each other, and the small and large victories of life that they face together. I couldn't put it down.
This was a second read for me, and while I enjoyed it thoroughly, I have to admit there was a bit too much flora and fauna for my taste.
A few spectacular quotes that struck me:
You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.
[Friendship] is a relationship that has no formal shape, there are no rules or obligations or bonds as in marriage or the family, it is held together by neither law nor property nor blood, there is no glue in it but mutual liking. It is therefore rare.
Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?... Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?
Ambition is a path, not a destination, and it is essentially the same path for everybody. No matter what the goal is, the path leads through Pilgrim’s Progress regions of motivation, hard work, persistence, stubbornness, and resilience under disappointment. Unconsidered, merely indulged, ambition becomes a vice; it can turn an man into a machine that knows nothing but how to run. Considered, it can be something else — pathway to the stars, maybe. I suspect that what makes hedonists so angry when they think about overachievers is that the overachievers, without benefit of drugs or orgies, have more fun.
Hard writing makes easy reading.
There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic. When you stand outside a door and push the button, something has to happen. Someone must respond; whatever is inside must be revealed. Questions will be answered, uncertainties or mysteries dispelled. A situation will be started on its way through unknown complications to an unpredictable conclusion. The answer to your summons may be a rush of tearful welcome, a suspicious eye at the crack of the door, a shot through the hardwood, anything. Any pushing of any doorbell button is as rich in dramatic possibility as that scene in Chekhov when, just as the Zemstvo doctor's only child dies of diphtheria and the doctor's wife drops to her knees beside the bed and the doctor, smelling of carbolic, takes an uncertain step backward, the bell sounds sharply in the hall.
The clear lesson of New England’s history is that when there are not enough suitable men around to run the world, women are perfectly capable of doing so.
Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn’t struck you.
I have heard of people's lives being changed by a dramatic or traumatic event--a death, a divorce, a winning lottery ticket, a failed exam. I never heard of anybody's life but ours being changed by a dinner party.
Order is indeed the dream of man, but chaos, which is only another word for dumb, blind, witless chance, is still the law of nature.
Talent lies around in us like kindling waiting for a match, but some people, just as gifted as others, are less lucky. Fate never drops a match on them. The times are wrong, or their health is poor, or their energy low, or their obligations too many. Something. Talent, I tell him, believing what I say, is at least half luck. It isn’t as if our baby lips were touched with a live coal, and thereafter we lisp in numbers or talk in tongues. We are lucky in our parents, teachers, experience, circumstances, friends, times, physical and mental endowment, or we are not. Born to the English language and American opportunity (I say this in 1937, after seven years of depression, but I say it seriously) we are among the incredibly lucky ones.
Drama demands the reversal of expectation, but in such a way that the first surprise is followed by an immediate recognition of inevitability.
Larry Morgan pretty much sums up the whole magic of this book with this line: "How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these? Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect? Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends? Where are the hatreds, the political ambitions, the lust for power? Where are speed, noise, ugliness, everything that makes us who we are and makes us recognize ourselves in fiction?"
That "high life" described is definitely not in this book and rightly so. Instead, you see a faithful and quiet portrait of two couples' marriages, their friendship with each other, and the small and large victories of life that they face together. I couldn't put it down.
This was a second read for me, and while I enjoyed it thoroughly, I have to admit there was a bit too much flora and fauna for my taste.
A few spectacular quotes that struck me:
You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.
[Friendship] is a relationship that has no formal shape, there are no rules or obligations or bonds as in marriage or the family, it is held together by neither law nor property nor blood, there is no glue in it but mutual liking. It is therefore rare.
Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?... Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?
Ambition is a path, not a destination, and it is essentially the same path for everybody. No matter what the goal is, the path leads through Pilgrim’s Progress regions of motivation, hard work, persistence, stubbornness, and resilience under disappointment. Unconsidered, merely indulged, ambition becomes a vice; it can turn an man into a machine that knows nothing but how to run. Considered, it can be something else — pathway to the stars, maybe. I suspect that what makes hedonists so angry when they think about overachievers is that the overachievers, without benefit of drugs or orgies, have more fun.
Hard writing makes easy reading.
There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic. When you stand outside a door and push the button, something has to happen. Someone must respond; whatever is inside must be revealed. Questions will be answered, uncertainties or mysteries dispelled. A situation will be started on its way through unknown complications to an unpredictable conclusion. The answer to your summons may be a rush of tearful welcome, a suspicious eye at the crack of the door, a shot through the hardwood, anything. Any pushing of any doorbell button is as rich in dramatic possibility as that scene in Chekhov when, just as the Zemstvo doctor's only child dies of diphtheria and the doctor's wife drops to her knees beside the bed and the doctor, smelling of carbolic, takes an uncertain step backward, the bell sounds sharply in the hall.
The clear lesson of New England’s history is that when there are not enough suitable men around to run the world, women are perfectly capable of doing so.
Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn’t struck you.
I have heard of people's lives being changed by a dramatic or traumatic event--a death, a divorce, a winning lottery ticket, a failed exam. I never heard of anybody's life but ours being changed by a dinner party.
Order is indeed the dream of man, but chaos, which is only another word for dumb, blind, witless chance, is still the law of nature.
Talent lies around in us like kindling waiting for a match, but some people, just as gifted as others, are less lucky. Fate never drops a match on them. The times are wrong, or their health is poor, or their energy low, or their obligations too many. Something. Talent, I tell him, believing what I say, is at least half luck. It isn’t as if our baby lips were touched with a live coal, and thereafter we lisp in numbers or talk in tongues. We are lucky in our parents, teachers, experience, circumstances, friends, times, physical and mental endowment, or we are not. Born to the English language and American opportunity (I say this in 1937, after seven years of depression, but I say it seriously) we are among the incredibly lucky ones.
Drama demands the reversal of expectation, but in such a way that the first surprise is followed by an immediate recognition of inevitability.
lydt's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
smbla's review against another edition
5.0
Crossing to Safety is a deeply absorbing and as Stegner referred to it a “quiet book”. The story of the friendship of two couples is told in the span of a day. You meet Larry and Sally Morgan and Sid and Charity Lang in Wisconsin young and starting out-they share a love of literature and intellect. They are the joining of the Eastern intellect (The Langs) and Western intellect (The Morgans). Larry is the dedicated and ambitious writer and Sid the hidden poet /at heart good teacher but not department head material - Sally the supportive spouse and Charity the exacting partner.
There are success and tragedies-there are moments of intense emotional clarity and compassion and moments of exactitude and manipulation but through it all there is an abiding friendship. Early on you learn of Sally’s polio later you learn of the Lang’s generosity in their support. You identify with Larry’s drive, Sid’s innate kindness, Sally’s motivation to not be a burden, and Charity’s desire for the best for her loved ones. Interspersed are some extremely funny moments -one son-in-law refers to the Lang women as a pride and perhaps everyone should recognize it as such and why that is alright with him and some extremely touching ones-Larry’s still wanting to throttle the Dr. that nearly cost him both Sally and his daughter during her delivery even twenty five years later.
Stegner poses interesting questions on how we think about ambition and success, how adversity can deepen a relationship and how perhaps the inner workings of a lifetime together should only be the province of the participants. He shows us that life is quiet and complicated and that there is beauty in simplicity and nature.
There are success and tragedies-there are moments of intense emotional clarity and compassion and moments of exactitude and manipulation but through it all there is an abiding friendship. Early on you learn of Sally’s polio later you learn of the Lang’s generosity in their support. You identify with Larry’s drive, Sid’s innate kindness, Sally’s motivation to not be a burden, and Charity’s desire for the best for her loved ones. Interspersed are some extremely funny moments -one son-in-law refers to the Lang women as a pride and perhaps everyone should recognize it as such and why that is alright with him and some extremely touching ones-Larry’s still wanting to throttle the Dr. that nearly cost him both Sally and his daughter during her delivery even twenty five years later.
Stegner poses interesting questions on how we think about ambition and success, how adversity can deepen a relationship and how perhaps the inner workings of a lifetime together should only be the province of the participants. He shows us that life is quiet and complicated and that there is beauty in simplicity and nature.
christiek's review against another edition
2.0
I cannot figure out why people like this book. I labored through the first 75 slow pages somewhat enjoyed the middle 150, and then it ground to a halt and by the end I could not figure out why on earth all these characters (and readers) tolerated Charity. She really needed someone to tell her off. Especially at the end.