All the Live Little Things

All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The title implies that the book will be happy and light and maybe give the peace and joy that Joe and his wife, Ruth are seeking when they move to California. They are dealing with the death (and apparent suicide) of their son and hope to find peace in the countryside. Instead, they- or at least he- finds aggravation and more sorrow, but they also get the chance to love someone truly special in the character of Marian. As I read, I was so frustrated that only Joe and me seemed to think it was NOT okay for a hippie commune be set up on his property- stealing land, power, and water and making a mess of his property and of innocent lives. Everyone else in the story seemed to think it was just youth, and let’s just live and let live, and “you’re just mad because he reminds you of your son.” At one point, I was so frustrated, I considered emailing Mr. Alston and telling him he was in the right, and that I supported him, and then I remembered he wasn’t real and that the book was set in the ‘60s, long before email was invented. But that’s how real Stegner’s books are. You can’t observe on the sidelines- the reader, in spite of himself, becomes deeply emotionally involved. The book also deals with death and preparing for death and with the sacrifice of a mother, which Joe simply can’t understand. So the book is full of conflict and pain and frustration. But, as in Stegner’s other books, he gets inside the human soul and heart in a way few others are able to do. At times in the book, I was literally sobbing in grief. But as Joe says, “I shall be richer all my life for this sorrow.” I truly believe that each of Stegner’s books make me richer.



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