I think what he’s saying is that something as seemingly mundane as the friendship of two couples can be as riveting and universal as tragic choices or spectacular heroics.

For younger bookworms – and nostalgic older ones too – there’s the Slightly Foxed Cubs series, in which we’ve reissued a number of classic nature and historical novels. Yes, I came across it in Waterstones, too – I think they included it in one of their Book Club promotions. I have met this type of personality (control freak) at times in my life and feel it is you who are responsible if you let others control your life and daily agenda. I can only tackle a few of them in this post so will pick those, of course, that speak most to my enthusiasms. This is an unusual review for me because I’ve barely touched on aspects like the style and the structure.The two men, both teachers, struggle with getting tenure, finding professional fulfillment and success.

There are several discussions between the characters, as well as comments by the narrator, on the subject. Sidney is also a teacher, and independently wealthy; his wife is a blunt and ambitious string-puller whose family owns a Kennedy Compound-like piece of land in the Vermont hills. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. They are a habitat we were once fully adapted to, a sort of Peaceable Kingdom where species such as ours might evolve unchallenged and find their step on the staircase of being.About the things that we start to lose, no matter how successful we are, how well we plan, how cleanly we live. Pretty well everyone in my group didn’t want to hurry through the book because we all wanted to savour the time spent with those people (even Charity!

The story is told mostly in flashback; the narrator, Larry Morgan, and his wife, Sally, settle into their new home in Madison, Wisconsin, as Larry begins a term teaching creative writing at the university's English department. She is probably the least defined of the four, supportive to all, but ultimately the one most in need of the support of her friends. Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends? His endgame, set at Sid and Charity’s compound, is absolutely devastating – not entirely pleasant to read, but honest and brutal.Larry sometimes mentions his poverty (rapidly overcome), but the reality of the Great Depression – and, for that matter, the convulsions of World War II – are deeply backgrounded. I spent several hours reading and re-reading this poem today, and wondering why I never sat with it before, to digest and devour it, but only admired it in passing, with Frost always being such a favorite poet of mine. The thread keeping it together is much different from that of family, which always seems to be there no matter what, even if it’s a rather snarled thread. Recollection, I have found, is usually about half-invention, and right now I realise that there is much about Sid and Charity Lang that I either invented or got secondhand.

Connections to others, and to oneself, abound in the most unlikely places during the most unlikely times. But in a sense it feels as though that is the surface, and that there are deeper, less obviously expressed themes throughout the book. It is one based entirely on the conscious decision of both couples to get to know one another and nurture that relationship. Another Wallace Stegner novel that I would strongly recommend for readers who have been, or who are, in long-term relationships! I wonder if I have ever felt more alive, more competent in my mind and more at ease with myself and my world, than I feel for a few minutes on the shoulder of that known hill while I watch the sun climb powerfully and confidently and see below me the unchanged village, the lake like a pool of mercury, the varying greens of hayfields and meadows and sugarbush and black spruce words, of all of it lifting and warming as the stretched shadows shorten.The characters in this book (primarily Larry and his wife Sally, and their friends Sid and Charity Lang) have personalities that are indelibly etched in my heart. Larry and Sid (their wives are never given independent ambitions) begin as young, idealistic world-beaters, with aspirations towards publication. The trees, the smells, the weather changes, the variants in the sky – I know them all intimately from reading this book.