Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

Everybody I know has been recommending Crossing to Safety, after it appeared on the bookclub show on TV I think. This is a fine, mature, understated book about the relationship between friends and between partners. There was a lot to love about it: It’s beautifully written, with elegant and accurate language. Stegner knows exactly what word to use. There’s not a lot of drama to it, so it’s a quiet novel about the day to day detail of a lifelong relationship and it’s all the more authentic for that. The characters are utterly believable. I kept finding shadows of myself in the domineering Charity, which was uncomfortable. Yet in a way I could understand why she was as she was: immensely capable, motivated only by the wish to help others, yet trapped by her gender, her five children and by the age in which she lived. These days she’d be a corporate lawyer working in social justice or something. Not that any of this is even hinted at in the novel. She’s happy with her life, sees no other choices lost, but organizes the people in her world because it is simply better that way. Stegner was quite old when he wrote this book and you can see his maturity and the wisdom that comes with it. He understands about relationships, so partners can be overwhelmed and exhausted by each other yet still be utterly dependent on one another like old vines that have intertwined. Mmmm, wonderful.