Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful, serious and thought provoking
Review: A provocative story about the bond of friendship. Stegner's characters are vital, fully realized, complex, and thouroughly engaging. Though the story starts in simpler times, Depression era, the issues here (love, loyalty, staying true to one's self) remain relevant. The writing is poetic, even elegiac. I haven't been moved so deeply by a writer since my first introduction to Steinbeck's East of Eden. I've just finished Angle of Repose and I'm just starting The Spectator Bird. At this rate, I'll be through the Stegner catalog before Fall. I just can't get enough of this beautiful storyteller.
Rating: 
Summary: Story of Two Couples Whose Friendship Spans Decades
Review: I bought this book with great expectation having read the glowing reviews here at amazon. The premise of the story sounded intriguing---two 'ordinary' couples meet and form a friendship that lasts a lifetime. Alas, real life is often dull and this book redefines dull. The promise of youth and the sadness of aging no matter how gracefully, the love that endures sickness and health, the value of true friendship are all examined and with introspective honesty. However, what isn't in the book, the great moments glossed over or ignored, left this reader wondering how Wallace Stegner got to be so renowned.On a more positive note, if you can endure the first 3/4 of the book, the last 1/4 will be uplifting. The reader will finally get some insight into Charity and Syd's dysfunctional marriage, Larry's unquestioning love for the invalid Sally, and the universality of Stegner's premise that one of us doesn't differ that much from another, each generation repeating its parents so that everything returns upon itself, repeating and renewing until the present can hardly be told from past. Stegner writes a convincing enough narrative about the grace of surviving life, but as for me, the next time I want a story about nothing, I will tune in to a Seinfeld rerun.
Rating: 
Summary: (4.5)An intricate twining of marriage and friendship
Review: Stegner's Crossing to Safety is a gift on many levels, in the quality of the writing, the depth of the story and the internal awareness it invokes in the reader. Following the intricate friendship of two young academic couples through the years, Stegner incorporates a familiarity into his characters, recognition of ourselves and those we love. The story takes place in a bucolic setting that illustrates the author's deep love for the natural beauty of this country, whether in the pristine woods of Wisconsin or the amber hues of New Mexico.Yet this is a difficult landscape, as one couple has little but a brilliant future ahead and the other has material comfort, but longs for the acceptance and approval of their community. Neither shall experience the expected, once life makes her mark upon their futures. Through the interwoven experience of the two couples, Stegner carefully dissects the structure of marriage, the nature of commitment and the delicate balance of intimacy. Their characteristics are universal, the stubbornness and the strengths both human and courageous. Their personalities are familiar, with the faults that make us at the same time so irritating and endearing to one another. Indeed, in the complicated layers of friendship, life is not always lived graciously, but certainly consciously. In this deeply moving novel about marriage and friendship, the author reveals the aspects of each: why people are drawn together in the ritualistic dance of marriage, how the bonds of friendship allow people to endure whatever difficulties life throws their way and, finally, why these troublesome but important connections are so necessary in creating a livable present, regardless of future losses. Everything exists in the constantly recurring moments of choice; just as these couples know each other immediately as friends, so we are aware of our own choices, partners, friendships and aspirations. Luan Gaines/2004.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and serious
Review: An provocative story about the bond of friendship. Stegner's characters are vital, fully realized, complex, and thouroughly engaging. Though the story starts in simpler times, Depression era, the issues here (love, loyalty, staying true to one's self) remain relevant. The writing here is poetic, even elegiac. I haven't been moved so deeply by a writer since my first introduction to Steinbeck's East of Eden. I've just finished Angle of Repose and I'm just starting The Spectator Bird. At this rate, I'll be through the Stegner catalog before Fall. I just can't get enough of this beautiful storyteller.
Rating:
Summary: The poet is no match for a controlling,publish or die wife
Review: I was fascinated by Charity and her need to control every situation,especially her husband. She delighted in orchestrating every detail of their lives; a picnic was never just a picnic, it had to be a feast complete with entertainment. I found myself wishing that I had a friend like that who could arrange wonderful nights of drama and literature and friends. I did not like what she did to Sid; how she refused to value his role of the poet and the observer. However, I loved her strength, her fierce loyalty, and her generosity. Several of the reviews mention that this book is semi-autobiographical; I had the strongest feeling as I was reading this book that it was Stegner's voice and he really knew these people. I,too, have discovered Stegner late,even though I was an English major and a voracious reading-librarian. Why did it take me so long to discover him?
Rating:
Summary: Warm-hearted book with a devestating ending
Review: Warm-hearted book with a devastating ending "Crossing to Safety" is Stegner's swan song, his last novel. It does have a bittersweet, nostalgic feel to it, written from the perspective of an old writer/professor, much like Stegner, near the end of his life and looking back on what came before. The plot of the book involves the enduring friendship of two young couples, wed in the 1930s. Sid is a likeable fellow who struggles to gain academic acceptance and tenure, married to Charity, a well-to-do extrovert who micromanages his career. Larry, the narrator, is a naturally gifted novelist, married to the sweet-tempered Sally. The novel follows their lives through small wins (the acceptance of a novel) and near tragedies. This part moves in a smooth, elegiac way-you get the sense of Stegner's genuine affection for these characters-but I did not find the characters exceptional in any way. I confess, for example, to getting a small bee in my bonnet about the complete absence of the couples' children from most of the narrative. Sid and Charity's five kids and Larry and Sally's daughter are generally off-stage, under the care of a nanny. But then a kind of tidal wave hits, with all the skill Stegner can muster. The impending death of one of the characters brings out the conflicts inherent in even the most enduring of marriages; I know of no place in literature where the joys and sorrows of a marriage are portrayed with such precision and intensity. The way kindness and inadvertent cruelty seem all knotted up together; the way you can't live life apart; the way the intense abiding love of one person also makes you terribly vulnerable. These Stegner gets exactly, truly right. Read through to this remarkable end; it will be worthwhile.
Rating:
Summary: Diverse couples form a complexity of relationships.
Review: Wallace Stegner is a beautiful writer! His study of, love for, and intimacy with nature is evident throughout "Crossing to Safety". Hills, ferns, birds, sunsets, colors, the stars, Mother Nature's lighting of her domain are all described with an abiding love and deep-seated appreciation. Into the safe nest of Vermont's hills a complex relationship between and among two couples evolve. Sally and Larry struggled for money from the early days of their marriage. It were not for the beneficence of Charity and Sid, they may have struggled endlessly. But it is a fortuitous meeting between the two young couples at a Mid-Western university that opens many doors to the poorer of the two couples. Charity (is her name meant to be ironic?) is a mover and shaker from a wealthy East Coast background. Sid would never have been deemed appropriate by Charity's mother had it not been discovered that the unassuming young man had considerable wealth of his own. From that moment on his stature grows with the family and his future path is taken in tow by Charity. She demands that Sid become a published writer. It seems an easy enough task for Larry but for Sid, it's a task that never really comes to fruition. Charity is relentless in her drive to have Sid become tenured at the Mid-Western university. It does not come to pass and she is so devastated that a mysterious stay in a sanitarium was required. So positive is Charity that Sid will be asked to stay permanently at the university that she commandeers the building of a stately home in the college area. From young couples with growing families to middle-aged persons, the reader follows their trials and tribulations. Sally has borne the devastation of polio with the usual grace she brings to any situation. Larry is her devoted, admiring follower and support system. Charity still tries to run everyone's lives and is now in full charge of her own demise...from cancer. Charity grates on a person. Despite her charitable tendencies, she is such a strong personality that she dominates everyone and everything. Now, at the threshold of her death, Charity has reconvened her friends and grown family for a picnic of all things. The menu has been selected; certain songs should be sung...of course! And Sid utterly refuses to join the festivities Charity has deemed a must! Sid obviously loves his wife, is devastated at her imminent death, is unsure he can live without Charity. Yet, he is torn by her insistence that she go to an institution to die. In her mind this is to save Sid...yet again. This part of the story is hard to follow. Has Sid, early on deemed wanting, been treated as a child so long that he cannot handle another dimension of life's trajectory? Oddly enough, it is Sally who seems to best understand her devoted friend Charity and often defends Charity to Larry when he bristles with what he has observed as Charity's treatment of her husband. "Crossing to Safety" is beautifully written! It is the writing that helps to forgive some of the weaker parts of the story.
Rating:
Summary: fractured and diffuse and quiet and lovely
Review: Every man and woman must pause near the end of their days and contemplate what has gone before, how it was good and how it could have been better, the paths chosen and the ones passed by. "Crossing to Safety" is the story of a novelist, reaching old age, doing just that. The book revolves around a friendship between two couples, enduring but often fragmented, as the vagaries of their careers and the varying fortunes of the twentieth century carry them between locales and from good fortune to bad and back. The book addresses the entire married lives of its characters, a span of some 35 years in which they achieve varying degrees of success and failure and, ultimately, all grow old. It is this 35-year span, in a book of under 300 pages, that defines the novel. Stegner's prose is poignant and specific, and scenes are described with painstaking lushness, but in a novel of this moderate length there are not many scenes. Most of the story is told in restrospect, and the narrator skims over years and decades the way an old man telling a story might. The tale is not of four lives and fortunes but about the link between them, and the story dwells in the months and years when the couples' friendship is strongest. One of the novel's peculiarities is the distance it holds the reader at, an analytic perspective that asks the us to think about life along with the narrator, but not to experience the emotional events of the book. This makes the book thought-provoking but less compelling, in a visceral, page-turning sense, than it could have been. And the thoughts the book provokes are not, as might be expected, about the nature and beauty of lifelong friendship. Ultimately, each character, each person, is an entity unto himself. In the end, everyone is isolated and everyone must decide for himself what, if anything, has made his life worth living.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great 20th century American novels
Review: Wallace Stegner is one of the great American novelists of the 20th century and this novel is his final one and the crowning achievement of his career. This is an elegaic work that spans the lives of two couples from their meeting at college till near the end of their lives. It is a deep, profound meditation of friendship, aging, career, & competitive jealousies. My favorite scenes are the Italian festival in which the protagonist watches as a predawn procession of peasants with candles draw mysteriously closer and closer to him. The last scene, set near the close of one of the protagonists' lives was heartbreakingly beautiful and I couldn't help but cry.
Rating:
Summary: Eminently readable book by a literary giant
Review: Wallace Stegner's works can be enjoyed on two levels that fortunately overlap: as great literature and as a good story. Crossing to Safety is the story of two couples from very different backgrounds who form a lifelong friendship during the Depression when both men are professors at a university. Stegner tracks their lives at each point of intersection with empathy and beautiful prose. The book reads as a meditation on idealism and the individual and group reactions of these inherently 'good' people to the blows that life and circumstances inevitably inflict upon them.
Read this book, and then read everything else Stegner wrote, especially Angle of Repose.
|
