Crossing to Safety - Wallace Stegner
This is a book about two couples, navigating their lives with their spouses and with each other. The book is told from one man’s point of view, but it bounces between being told by looking back on his history and being told in the moment. This style of writing is the first element of the book that strikes me. It sets a tone of reflection, even in the chapters that are told in the moment. Even when he is telling a story as if it is happening right then, he will pepper in little insights that would only be possible from having lived through it.
I think I was drawn to this book because, from the beginning, it feels like a grandfather sitting you down to tell you some life lessons. It’s a quiet story, and it openly recognizes the “unremarkability” of its subjects and themes but is doesn’t minimize the impact that those things have in a person’s life. It may not be a remarkable story, but at least for these four people, it is the most important story in their lives.
The story also captures the inter-relationship dynamics really well. There is a scene where one couple (Sid and Charity) have an awkward argument in front of the narrator and his wife. Later, after some of the dust has settled and both sets of spouses have talked to their counterpart (wives and husbands), the narrator and his wife come back together and discuss what happened. They each have different perspectives and are sort of siding with their counterpart but they also are subtly judging the other couple for their behavior. It feels very real.
By the end of the book, it has become uncomfortably clear that Sid and Charity are not the perfect storybook couple. They have resentments that eat at each of them. They each have relationship needs that aren’t being met, no matter how hard one asks (outright or passively). Sid and the narrator have a discussion of the restraints that each have operated within throughout their lives and marriages. But these aren’t necessarily framed as negatives - they are like the structure that gave their lives some type of outline. For the narrator, Mary’s polio was the ultimate challenge that guided their lives. It restricted what they could do and utterly changed the course of their lives. For Sid, it was his (unhappy? Unfulfilled?) marriage to Charity that acted as his life constraints. Yet even as he admits to this, he says that he wouldn’t trade it for something else. It reminded me of the commitments that Brooks talked about in “The Second Mountain” and the purpose-giving responsibility that Jordan Peterson talks about in “12 Rules for Life.” By the end of the book, his wife, the woman that has dominated his life, has taken herself to the hospital without him because she didn’t think that he was strong enough to handle her death. At first he was angry about this, but by the end, he seems okay with this. How am I supposed to feel about his marriage in the end? It’s the only life he lived, and its his to own, and I feel like I’m supposed to have some type of acceptance that, even though it wasn’t perfect, it was still a beautiful marriage/life. But it also makes me feel sad. Him and his wife spent a lot of time not being happy with each other. Their marriage gave each other structure and meaning but its still a little sad. Maybe it could have been better.