Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner: The Novel Cure for dinner party fatigue
In Stegner's exhilarating novel, a friendship between two couples becomes the axis of their lives
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Your support makes all the difference.Ailment: Dinner party fatigue
Cure: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
Some blame having to put the kids to bed. Others that cooking at the end of a long day feels too much like hard work. Whatever the excuse, losing the habit of having your friends round for dinner – whether for a full-on dinner party with candles or a meal flung together from what's in the fridge – will starve your friendships and fail to nurture new ones. We prescribe the exhilarating blast of Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, in which a friendship between two couples, the Morgans and the Langs, becomes the axis of their lives.
It's 1937 in Madison, Wisconsin and Larry Morgan comes home one day to find his wife Sally having tea with Charity Lang, spouse of a fellow academic. With her blazing, vivid smile, Charity's charm and exuberance make an impact on them both. A few days later, they arrive nervously at the Langs' for a dinner party. But from the minute they step inside, such attention is showered on them by the gleaming Langs – Sally for her Chinese dragon robe, Larry for his literary promise – that they are immediately won over. Soon the four are chattering more animatedly than any of them ever have before. "I have heard of people's lives being changed by a dramatic or traumatic event – a death, a divorce, a winning lottery ticket," says the narrator, Larry. "I never heard of anybody's life but ours being changed by a dinner party." Overnight, Madison becomes an infinitely more fun place to be. Sally and Charity go to concerts, and compare notes on their parallel pregnancies. The four summer together in Vermont.
Their Eden is not without serpents. Charity's genius for making plans reveals a controlling flip-side; Sally is struck by debilitating illness; and the careers of both men disappoint. But with each setback comes an opportunity for the other couple to bestow affection, elevating them all.
Yes, you might be too tired to spatchcock the chicken. But lavish attention on your friends and you'll feed everyone concerned in much more important ways.
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