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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
Enjoyed this story of friendship and marriage. There were parts where the language felt a bit off, dated. The writing was wonderful.
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
I am not well 😭I have not stopped thinking about this one tbh
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Uncanny resemblance to familiar family dynamics but didn’t get much else out of the novel. Some beautiful prose found within an arguable disjointed narrative.
I’m someone who occasionally skims when I’m reading but this book put a stop to that! Stegner’s gift of prose was too good to skip over! The story is engaging and believable but the words he used to express the story blew me away.
I’ll give it some time and then re-read it again. I really enjoyed it! And that, after all is what reading for pleasure is all about!
I’ll give it some time and then re-read it again. I really enjoyed it! And that, after all is what reading for pleasure is all about!
emotional
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
November 2023 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- 4.5 stars. Did this as a read aloud with the Husband and it did not disappoint. It reminded us fondly of when we were newly married and finishing up college and starting grad school. It was fun to come back and reread the book with a little more perspective on life and marriage than I had when I first read it. We both felt the characters were deep and well written. I loved the thoughts on writing and being a writer this go around. This book reminds me of a coming of age style novel, but for marriages and friendships; how they mature and change and become more than what they began as.
November 2009 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- 4 stars. This was my first Wallace Stegner book. I loved his writing style! And I'm probably going to have to read some more of his work.
Crossing to Safety is definitely a character book. It's more about exploring the people in the book and why they are the way they are and less about what they do. The main characters are two couples, Larry and Sally Morgan, and Sid and Charity Lang, and the friendship they share throughout their lives. The story is written from Larry's point of view. The Morgan's are called to come visit the Langs one more time before Charity dies of cancer. The story is Larry's reflections, memories, and thoughts of the life long friendship the foursome has shared.
I felt like the book was honest. It didn't try to make the past appear only rosy, but remembered the good and the bad. The characters were authentic and interesting. And I thought that in the end the author's thoughts on death (as told by Larry Morgan) were so realistic but not necessarily romantic (in the english literature sense of the word, not the modern lovey dovey sense). Maybe I can explain that better. The question arises, is it possible to go on living when the one you love most dies, and how do you do it? Of course the dramatic answer would be that you cannot, that some Romeo and Juliet scene will have to occur. And indeed, I did think that the book would end with a suicide. But that's not the conclusion that this book comes to. In a very visual way the author discribes surviving a tragedy as an instinct. An almost unintentional action that the human mind does not know it can achieve until it does.
The ending was good, suspenceful (in a non-action packed sort of way), and insightful. But I felt like it need to go just a little further. I felt a little bit like I was left hanging, because it didn't wrap up in a nice little package with a pretty bow on top. But that's ok. All in all, a great book. I recommend it, especially to people who are in to character driven stories (as opposed to plot driven), this one is a good one.
November 2009 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- 4 stars. This was my first Wallace Stegner book. I loved his writing style! And I'm probably going to have to read some more of his work.
Crossing to Safety is definitely a character book. It's more about exploring the people in the book and why they are the way they are and less about what they do. The main characters are two couples, Larry and Sally Morgan, and Sid and Charity Lang, and the friendship they share throughout their lives. The story is written from Larry's point of view. The Morgan's are called to come visit the Langs one more time before Charity dies of cancer. The story is Larry's reflections, memories, and thoughts of the life long friendship the foursome has shared.
I felt like the book was honest. It didn't try to make the past appear only rosy, but remembered the good and the bad. The characters were authentic and interesting. And I thought that in the end the author's thoughts on death (as told by Larry Morgan) were so realistic but not necessarily romantic (in the english literature sense of the word, not the modern lovey dovey sense). Maybe I can explain that better. The question arises, is it possible to go on living when the one you love most dies, and how do you do it? Of course the dramatic answer would be that you cannot, that some Romeo and Juliet scene will have to occur. And indeed, I did think that the book would end with a suicide. But that's not the conclusion that this book comes to. In a very visual way the author discribes surviving a tragedy as an instinct. An almost unintentional action that the human mind does not know it can achieve until it does.
The ending was good, suspenceful (in a non-action packed sort of way), and insightful. But I felt like it need to go just a little further. I felt a little bit like I was left hanging, because it didn't wrap up in a nice little package with a pretty bow on top. But that's ok. All in all, a great book. I recommend it, especially to people who are in to character driven stories (as opposed to plot driven), this one is a good one.
Such a beautifully written book, very glad to have discovered this author, from Charlotte Wood's recommendation on The First Tuesday Book Club (ABC TV, Australia).
Reading Stegner is, for me, like curling up in some kind of mystical giant hammock. He surrounds you. The world he shows you makes no qualms about being filled with both the beautiful and the hard, and that one is not really recognizable without the other.
Crossing to Safety is about a friendship between two couples, that is its heart. It's about how the lives of four people are woven together through decades of interchange, dependence (in all its forms) and shared memories. From their early days in Madison, Wisconsin during the Depression, the Langs and the Morgans knew that what they had was a friendship that would last - but of course, years and trials can take their toll and after a while there is a solidity in just having known someone so well for so long.
What Stegner does so well is take us back and forth through time, fleshing out a relationship from the narrator's male point of view, allowing us a glimpse inside everyone's shared experience. I love how this is a story about people who are readers and writers, striving to be a part of an intellectual community, see-ers of the world and all it has to offer. Beyond the beautifully arching plot that follows an adult lifetime, his insights are so compatible with my own knowledge of friendships, especially between couples.
It's like in this one story he peeled away part of what it is to be human, looking at the underneath of why we do what we do and how our relationships guide and define our lives in so many ways. I had all these thoughts about "owing" people, how we show people how much we appreciate them and the things they do for us that can't even be defined in words. I thought about how sometimes a friendship is flawed and unbalanced and yet looking back, those imperfections would never have been enough to dislodge that person from our heart.
I want to compare Crossing to Safety to some kind of work of genius, but I've never read anything like it. Just trust me that its one you hold close to your heart and give to people you really care about.
Crossing to Safety is about a friendship between two couples, that is its heart. It's about how the lives of four people are woven together through decades of interchange, dependence (in all its forms) and shared memories. From their early days in Madison, Wisconsin during the Depression, the Langs and the Morgans knew that what they had was a friendship that would last - but of course, years and trials can take their toll and after a while there is a solidity in just having known someone so well for so long.
What Stegner does so well is take us back and forth through time, fleshing out a relationship from the narrator's male point of view, allowing us a glimpse inside everyone's shared experience. I love how this is a story about people who are readers and writers, striving to be a part of an intellectual community, see-ers of the world and all it has to offer. Beyond the beautifully arching plot that follows an adult lifetime, his insights are so compatible with my own knowledge of friendships, especially between couples.
It's like in this one story he peeled away part of what it is to be human, looking at the underneath of why we do what we do and how our relationships guide and define our lives in so many ways. I had all these thoughts about "owing" people, how we show people how much we appreciate them and the things they do for us that can't even be defined in words. I thought about how sometimes a friendship is flawed and unbalanced and yet looking back, those imperfections would never have been enough to dislodge that person from our heart.
I want to compare Crossing to Safety to some kind of work of genius, but I've never read anything like it. Just trust me that its one you hold close to your heart and give to people you really care about.
How have I gotten this far in life without reading Wallace Stegner? This book is a masterpiece. In telling the story of two couples who become fast, then lifelong, friends, Stegner makes the reader ponder the nature of love, marriage, achievement and, yes, mortality. I cried at the end and immediately wanted to read it again (along with everything else this guy has ever written).
68: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner...picked up at the overstuffed Renaissance bookstore in Milwaukee's General Mitchell Airport, on the way to Florida last weekend, not because I needed more books (I might even have a copy of this at home already) on the trip OR at home but because there was a bookstore...and used books...and I "had to," in that way. I've known of this book for years, ever since Stegner's Angle of Repose came up in AP Lit, prompting me to read it and introducing me to Stegner, and then further discussing with numerous AP Reader colleagues that they'd long loved Crossing to Safety, which I had not read. So something prompted me to make this purchase and pick it up, and I am so glad that I did. I'd call it one of my top five reads of 2018, though it was first published in 1987. It's about...life....and a well-lived life at that. I very much enjoy that the novel is initially set in Madison, Wisconsin, and references well that dear city and some of the state's other locales as well, additionally that it addresses UW-Madison's academia...albeit in 1937. But I very much enjoyed Stegner's study of two couples, one with much and the other with very little initially, who became tight friends during that shared time in Madison, and maintained their friendship for the rest of their lives. I loved that Stegner shows them to us in his present time, deep and long into their friendship, and also builds for us their connections and relationships--each of the academics finding their way through career, each of their spouses having children and supporting, two of the four encountering serious illness along the way, one couple even borrowing money from the other--really building each of these four individuals as treasured characters throughout the novel. Stegner's own steady writing life is surely presented through the character of Larry Morgan, and his own long and devoted marriage and some of its sentiments likely included here as well. So, this makes two Stegner novels that I've read. Thankfully there are 26 more to enjoy! The next will be Recapitulation...because I bought that at the same bookstore, too! I highly recommend him...and this novel...to you!