Wallace Stegner is a fantastic writer. He makes me nostalgic for a time I never experienced. He creates real characters and makes you realize that people today are no more sophisticated or complex than past generations. He doesn't resort to easy plot gimmicks and devices, there are no betrayals, no explosions, no trips to Betty Ford. There's just good old fashioned character driven story that is told so well told that I want to eat my book.

End of review.

The rest are just some assorted comments and observations I would like to share.

First, there is reference to $490 savings at 4%. Yes Virginia,there was a time when ordinary passbook savings accounts earned the enviable 4%. (BTW, the author is so literary he spells out four hundred and ninety dollars savings at four percent).

Second, the story features a car called a Marmon which had a V-16 engine (oddly enough, he didn't spell that out), running boards and spare tires on the sides. I'm just enough of a car nerd, I had to google it. Turns out, only 400 of these babies were built from 1931-1933. Victim of the Great Depression.

Third, one of the characters, Sally Morgan is stricken with polio while on a week-long hiking/camping trip. She survives

not a spoiler, we meet her in the first chapter 30 years later

(spoiler show)

 but to debilitating effects. Aside from requiring leg braces and crutches to walk, one of her hands was permanently clenched. Growing up, I had a friend whose mother had the same clenched hand, a skid mark from a bought of childhood polio. This took place in the late 1930's, more than 20 years before polio vaccinations became commonplace. It's so easy to forget the devastating effects of diseases that are nearly wiped out, and with each generation, the reason for vaccinating has become more and more abstract. No wonder an anti-vaxxer movement has emerged, just mix some misinformation with long forgotten diseases, and presto, blissful ignorance. Le sigh.

Lastly, chalk one on for old white-guy authors. My first Wallace Stegner read was Angle of Repose and I really liked it. I even recommended it to my mother who was writing a family history, much like the protagonist. Anyway, it was good and I didn't really think more about the author. Recently, I read Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith and the author references Wallace Stegner writings in several places. Turns out, Stegner isn't just a writer of fiction, but also some non-fics related to the US West and Mormon history. I am intrigued.

4.18373562

This book sounds so boring; two couples meet in their twenties while working at the same Wisconsin university. They stay friends for the rest of their lives. The narrator even points out more than once that there isn't going to be any melodrama. And yet, this is a powerful story about loyalty and friendship and tolerance. It's addresses what it takes to stay married, to stay friends, when we're all flawed. I will keep thinking about these characters for some time to come, thinking about how this applies to my own marriage, my friends, my eventual death, and the deaths of those I love. How does one do all those things "right?

Relationship novels are not typically my thing but I truly enjoyed this one. It has beautiful language, mostly well-drawn characters and just enough interest in what will happen next to make one want to keep reading even though not that much ever really happens. Of course I pretty much hated Charity at the end, but I really think we are supposed to. She has spent a lifetime running everything and always getting her way, of course she will be the one to decide how she dies even if it means leaving Sid out of it. You are left wondering if he truly will be able to go on. I wish Sally were a little more fleshed-out as a character. Before the polio, she’s primarily the fun but overshadowed friend. Afterward she is the long-suffering but still faithful-to-the-end friend.
Additionally I wanted to see each of them grow just a little bit out of the roles they established early in the relationship. But none of them really ever did. Charity was the ringleader, Sally was the devoted friend and wife, Sid was the rich provider who can’t ever quite satisfy his wife’s ambitions and Larry was the faithful and supportive workaholic. They were all just about the same at the end as they were all along, and I guess that’s my main complaint. Their relationships were maintained throughout the years despite their various hardships and physical distance, but they never really evolved. You think in that last scene in Charity’s bedroom, something will change, someone will break the mold and do something different, but it doesn’t happen. So I was unsatisfied with the end even though I enjoyed the whole very much.