This is an amazing book. I'm not even sure how I heard about it. I think I read some reviews online, but I have also heard of Stegner. He's so accomplished and yet so accessible on a surface level. I say surface level because he has so many literary and artistic references that are obscure to me, but aren't necessary to follow the plot. Some of his allusions I got, but honestly, most I did not. Now that I've read it once, I will go back and read it a second time, knowing how the plot goes, I will be able to pause and google the references. It will be worth it, I know, because this is some of the richest writing I've ever read.
Somehow Stegner is able to give us inner thoughts, doubts, and beauty in remarkable ways. He creates such a warm tableau of examples of the friendship of two young couples and how the grow and struggle and develop over the years. It's a beautiful and pleasant story that I savored all along the way...even though there were hints of struggle, they didn't dominate. And then...near the end, these hints became less subtle and drove the action. The friendship is so sweet and so supportive that the pain that (maybe inevitably?) comes is heartbreaking. And yet it's bittersweet because the pain and challenge are handled with so much compassion and admiration. I absolutely love these four characters!
In the beginning I marked a few of the more remarkable passages, but soon gave up because I would be marking up the entire book! I also think it's a book that would be more appreciated by an older person who has the benefit of some decades of experience of how relationships evolve. I also enjoyed the "publish or perish" pressure because I understand it. Enjoyed is probably not the right word, but I related to it.
Here's a passage I marked early on:
Charity (one of the four main characters) was clearly one of these (a female version of some superior breed). Born to Harvard, she had gone to Smith and returned to marry Harvard. She had grown up in contact with the beauty and the chivalry of Cambridge. She, and presumably her husband as well, represented the cultivation, good manners, consideration for others, cleanliness of body and brightness of mind and dedication to high thinking that were the goals of outsiders like me, dazzled western barbarians aspiring to Rome. Mixed with my liking was, I am sure, an almost equal deference, a respect too sincere to be tainted with envy.
Here's another:
Time has not dimmed her, sickness has only increased her wattage. She lights things up like a photoflood.
And one more:
...Charity and Sally are stitched together with a thousand threads of feeling and shared experience. Each is for the other that one unfailingly understanding and sympathetic fellow-creature that everybody wishes for and many never find.
I relished the country scenes in the woods of Vermont. The strong family ties and the strong women and quiet husbands who lived there were fascinating to learn about. The sacrifices and generosity that one couple made for the benefit of the other was so inspiring that I felt truly ashamed. Could I ever be that generous?
One reason I want to revisit this story with the allusions better-understood is to try to discern what Stegner is saying about faith and suffering. He sees the beauty and describes the pain...I'm uncertain about his resolve or his answers. Both of these couples are beautifully united, and yet Sid and Charity seem to be in such pain in their struggle to control or not be controlled. Sally and the narrator have a healthier relationship, it seems. There's a lot to unpack here...and I am trying to think of someone who would enjoy unpacking it with me...
