Yes, I came across it in Waterstones, too – I think they included it in one of their Book Club promotions. When we first meet Charity and Sid at the beginning in the small mid-western town, they have two young children with one on the way. From here, Larry narrates their story through a series of flashbacks starting with the Morgans’ move to Madison, Wisconsin in 1937. My dreams are affected, my relationships are affected, my perception of self is affected, and my writing style and speaking style change – all because of the fumes from this book seepage. His people are academics, so there is a lot of conversation around poetry, literature, history, culture – all of which they love, but if it’s unfamiliar to you, it doesn’t matter.

The span of history was wide, from their early days in Madison to their elder years at the Langs’ summer home in Vermont.And speaking of pin-setting, the closing scenes he built towards featured plenty of drama even if most of it was subcutaneous. 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. In Crossing to Safety, however, the outside world seldom intrudes on a very insular, inward-looking story. 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.

You come to me and say, “I’m going away to a cabin in the woods by myself for a few days, to escape the noise of 21st century life.Oh, and the women in this book are given equal billing to the men, which is always a good thing in my view. Wow, that’s a really nice thing to say readerbuzz, but I will say that many of us, I think, envy other people’s reviews so take heart from that. Yet, all of these reasons are detailed in the book that, ostensibly, he has eventually written about the friendship of the two couples, Crossing to Safety. Despite some dark passages, it’s a delight to read and I’m adding it as one of my all-time favorites.

No, not the one with Chevy Chase and a stiff relation on the car roof, the one that is a place of real literary wonder.I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the nation in which I live.

We’re here to help you find that book that you can’t put down, the book you’ll push on all your friends, the book that’ll change your life.

Thinking about it more, I fet there was a bit of anti-Semitism in the book - despite the narrator's offhand denial - in that the only Jewish people portrayed are the couple that is rejected by the group, but especially Morris later who has a stutter. And despite the fact that this is told from Larry’s point of view, it is the Langs that sit in the spotlight. The trees, the smells, the weather changes, the variants in the sky – I know them all intimately from reading this book. But I feel as if I owe some form of expression to one of the pioneers of Graduate Art Programs who helped developed budding artists like myself who can only wish she gains an ounce of the creative momentum Larry had in this novel.