Like Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium", Jane Rule's The Young In One Another's Arms is concerned with the problem of aging, but whereas the poem proclaimed the possibility of transcending life and all its mortal limitations through the creation of lasting works of art, the novel takes the position that the old have a useful though not necessarily conventional role to perform in a world that is threatened increasingly by modern social, technological and political ills. In this world it is not age that is the issue, although the aged can provide experience and direction for the young, but rather it is one's attitude to one's fellow man and one's concern about finding alternatives to the prevailing malaise that are important. Rule takes the position that old and young must live life with all its multiple and variable qualities as best as circumstances allow, adapting and coping, even finding...