Not great. Was not nearly as good as Angle of Repose ( )

An amazing work by Stegner. Is this man still remembered and valued so many years after he’s gone? He should be for in my view he is one of the finest writers of the 20th century. This novel takes place in the early 60’s in California. In the first pages Sabrina Castro announces to her husband that she’s had an affair while vacationing in Mexico. He doesn’t react the way she thought (hoped) he would; he’s contained and controlled, not showing the anger and anguish she expected. It was as if the worth she needs to feel about herself should have been affirmed by her husband’s reaction. It wasn’t and this enrages her. Sabrina feels guilty but conflicted by the affair, still attracted to her lover, but hoping her confession will bring on a crisis that will somehow relieve her unhappiness with her marriage. Her husband is a doctor who, she thinks, cares more about his practice than giving their marriage the time and substance she wants. This starts a downward spiral for Sabrina whose self-absorption and guilt propels her further and further into dissolution and dissipation.

Sabrina leaves her husband to return to her family home near San Francisco. Here we begin to see the family influences that have shaped her dysfunctional emotional make-up. Sabrina’s mother, Dorothy Hutchens, is exceedingly wealthy having come from an old family from New England whose ancestor a very long time ago made a fortune that the family has lived on since. Sabrina’s mother, Dorothy, is eccentric and disconnected with any semblance of modern life. She is obsessed with a sort of ancestor worship, constantly re-reading diaries and journals of her late relatives and looking at every aspect of life into the context of her forbearers. She is quite snobbish and has a view of proper moral behavior that is 19th century in tone. She has not been warm or nurturing to Sabrina, having always been more concerned about “proper” behavior and comportment than developing a deep, intimate mother-daughter relationship. Sabrina and she are not close and Sabrina resents her mother’s distance and hectoring demeanor.

What becomes clear, and I think this is at the heart of Sabrina’s psychological difficulties, is that the members of this family have for generations been of no substance or value. They have all lived lives without accomplishment or productive contribution to society. They were not morally dissolute, but hang on to an aristocratic ethos that made them self-satisfied in their superiority, but worthless to anyone. Dorothy’s sisters never married and a brother lived as a gentleman of leisure traveling around the world to fill the vacuum of his life. Dorothy married, but her family thought her husband was not worthy of their station so, after Dorothy produced some heirs, he vanished with some financial incentive from the family. Dorothy lives in isolation from a life of meaning; she writes piddling small checks to various oddball charities to satisfy her sense of nobless oblige. Dorothy has a companion/secretary, Helen Kretchmer, who is attentive to Mrs. Hutchens and takes the role of the loyal daughter that Sabrina never was.

Sabrina is as hollow as her mother and her ancestors, but unlike them she realizes it. Attractive and well-educated, she has nothing in her life that brings it any depth and fulfillment. Her husband is content with just having her around, not demanding much other than her presence. She is full of bitterness, self-loathing and guilt and expresses that by engaging in increasingly self-destructive behavior.

Contrasting Sabrina’s angst about how to live her life is her friend, Barbara. Barbara came from a family with some degree of means. She is married to Leonard, a high school teacher who refuses to use her family’s wealth for a life above his school teacher salary. Barbara has two children with a third on the way. She and Leonard have the kind of life that has eluded Sabrina, a mundane suburban existence that nonetheless has depth and meaningfulness. (Stegner’s depiction of suburbia, written in its heyday of the early 60’s, is brilliantly satirical.) In contrast to Barbara and Leonard, Sabrina is trapped in circumstances that, despite her looks and wealth, have left her completely unfulfilled and she doesn’t know how to right herself.

Her decline is a sort of journey through a personal hell, one that she has created and for which she can find no constructive way out. Her histrionics and self-destructive acts are the ways she tries to purge herself of her guilt and her emptiness. I suppose one is inclined to be sympathetic or empathetic with protagonists, but Stegner doesn’t expect us to be so. He wants us to understand what drives Sabrina’s behavior, but not to admire her.

By the end of the novel Sabrina has so thoroughly degraded herself that she makes a suicide gesture. There is an event (no spoiler here) that could take her completely down the path of self-destruction. Somehow this is cathartic and she reaches an accommodation with her life situation that may lead her to some inner peace. One isn’t left with strong confidence, but there’s a glimmer that she can find at least a measure of contentment. ( )

While the basic idea for this story was good, the book itself went on interminably. The melodrama just went on and on and on and on!
I think there are very few men who can think and write as a woman.

I loved Stegner's Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety. I did not love A Shooting Star. ( )

Sabrina Castro was born into an extremely wealthy family and then married a rich doctor who works too much. Both in her childhood and her marriage she was emotionally deprived. Now she is bored, unsatisfied, so she has an affair and then tells her husband. Sounds like a good story, but it moves very slow, too wordy, and I never could drum up much sympathy for Sabrina - just a selfish, spoiled brat. Have heard good things about this author, so I will try another one of his books in hopes that this was his worst. ( )