Crossing to Safety (Modern Library Classics) | 
| Author: Wallace Earle Stegner
Publisher: Modern Library
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $1.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  109 reviews
Sales Rank: 5064
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 037575931X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780375759314
ASIN: 037575931X
Publication Date: April 9, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: earlier penguin printing different cover art some wear and use
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Amazon.com
It's deceptively simple: two bright young couples meet during the Depression and form an instant and lifelong friendship. "How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these?" Larry Morgan, a successful novelist and the narrator of the story, poses that question many years after he and his wife, Sally, have befriended the vibrant, wealthy, and often troubled Sid and Charity Lang. "Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish?" It's not here. What is here is just as fascinating, just as compelling, as touching, and as tragic. Crossing to Safety is about loyalty and survival in its most everyday form--the need to create bonds and the urge to tear them apart. Thirty-four years after their first meeting, when Larry and Sally are called back to the Langs' summer home in Vermont, it's as if for a final showdown. How has this friendship defined them? What is its legacy? Stegner offer answers in those small, perfectly rendered moments that make up lives "as quiet as these"--and as familiar as our own. --Sara Nickerson
Product Description
Called a “magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom” by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the twentieth century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 104 more reviews...
 No pain, no gain July 1, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
`How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these?' asks the author of his own characters, about two thirds through Crossing to Safety; that seems to be the challenge Stegner set himself.
The novel, running from the 1930s to the 70s, revolves around the friendship between two couples, the Langs and the Morgans, in which the men are both literature professors. The Langs are rich and endowed with extended families and the Morgans are self-made and orphans. They all lead full lives in which they remain by-and-large happily married.
Stegner is erudite, and he obviously loves the places he describes, from Madison, Wisconsin to Florence and including the secluded lakeside spot in New England where much of the book is set. But it is difficult to identify with characters whose lives are so uneventful. From the beginning, one of the protagonists is dying, but because the story is told from the perspective of the old Larry Morgan, that only comes out as looking back on a life well spent. The characters barely struggle, and when they do, Stegner chooses to skirt around their conflicts. The reader is left to enjoy his detailed and moody descriptions, his poetic quotes, and the contrasts between the depression and post-war eras: pleasant because the book is well written, but not very exciting.
`You don't,' would be my answer to Stegner's question. Judging from other reviews, obviously, I've come to the wrong conclusion.
 Fabulous! February 18, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Beautifully written, provocative, and enduring. Hated for it to end. Wanted to reread it immediately.
One of the best books I have ever read February 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Wallace Stegner is simply one of our finest writers and this book is great on so many levels. Remarkably little happens in the story, and yet he brings you so close to the characters that you can't take your eyes off of them. He won the Pulitzer for "Angle of Repose," which is also great, but I found Safety a far speedier, enjoyable read. If you have an intellectual bone in your head, you cannot go wrong with this.
Life Affirming January 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I thought this book was an affirmation of life and the joys it offers, all around us and within us. This writing has a quality that is very rare today, naturea and its changing landscapes also has a life of its own in the prose. The friendships between the two couples are beautifully mapped and the shifts between past and present are smooth and seamless, not confusing in the slightest. Aunt Emily was a fabulous character and I could happily read a whole book just about her life!
I'm so glad this is only my first Wallace Stegner book!
Enticing story of friendship - November 7, 2007
1 out of 11 found this review helpful
I couldn't put this book down. However, my complaint is the self-indulgent writing of Stegner's - he always seems to be winking at himself as he describes certain scenarios, attitudes of characters, etc..
It gets to be tiring... and the writing style is totally outdated! Not timeless!
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