Review

Susan Crossett’s new book and others reviewed

May 30, 2015

Spring has been hectic, in covering the arts of Western New York, and I have been impatiently waiting for an opportunity to share with you my thoughts on the publication of a new novel by Chautauqua County resident Susan Crossett.

Crossett's latest publication contains many of the things I respect and enjoy the most: classical music, travel, character development, and best of all, the world view of an interesting woman.

The book's full title is ''Love in Three Acts: A Work of Fiction.'' It's central focus is on a character named Elizabeth or Libby. We get three perspectives on her long life, beginning in 1960, when she is a graduate student, studying music. We first meet her as she prepares to leave with three of her female friends, for a concert tour of Italy, which they have won in a competition, as a string quartet. Libby is the cellist in the group. Donna is the violist, and Jean and Marty are the violinists.

None of the women has been abroad before this tour, and the Italy to which they travel is only 15 years removed from its conquest by American and British troops, during its Fascist flirtation with Hitler. American money was worth a great deal in recovering Italy, and the women are leaving a society which is extremely closed - as late as 1966, American women students in college still were required to wear skirts or dresses to dinner, and weren't allowed out of their dormitories past 11 p.m., for example - and they're headed to a society which has been forced to become open and permissive, to deal with the simple matter of survival.

All of the women are determined to experience the world of Italy, yet each of them has issues, back in the States. Libby, for example, has been in the early phases of what she hopes will be a romantic entanglement with the graduate instructor of one of their classes: a handsome, slightly older man named Zach. The entire trip involves the four women having European adventures, meeting or failing to meet young men, and seeking perspective between life in Italy and in the United States.

The second act of the novel is set in 1985. The quartet has decided to meet up in Aspen, where they once studied at the Aspen Music Festival, before that city became the winter resort it now is, to re-establish their friendships, report on their adult lives, and to gain some perspective on their past.

Libby is now a recent divorcee, determined that she is delighted to be on her own. And, who should she encounter at the resort than the celebrated Zach, from whom her earlier parting had always seemed oddly unsatisfying. Perhaps with age and experience, and the push of unexpected meeting, she might give the relationship another thought, although the end of this encounter comes as a total surprise.

The third act finds Libby living back in her home town of Gettysburg, Pa., in 2007. Attending a performance by a string quartet, at one of the universities in that city, who should enter the auditorium but the famed Zach. This time, he and Libby seem poised to establish the relationship which they had never previously been able to form. Or, perhaps not.

Libby is an interesting woman, and her development is believable and stimulates the reader to form his or her own thoughts on what might be the cause of various events.

The author chooses a colorful and interesting vocabulary, and has a gift for telling enough, yet leaving room for some conjecture, as well.

I'm sure that many readers would classify the book under the category of ''Chick Lit,'' because it focuses on the behavior and thoughts of women, and male characters are only observed and never known, but I don't think you need to hunt whales yourself, to enjoy reading ''Moby Dick,'' for example.

I found it an interesting read, and I found myself caring about its characters and events.

''Love in Three Acts'' was published by Authorhouse, in 2014. It has 246 pages, and is listed with a popular online bookseller for $19.95 in paperbound edition. Find it with ISBN number 978-1-4918-7044-0.

Read Mr. Plyler's complete review at: http://bit.ly/1KyK4dT

Critical Eye

Reviewed books span Buffalo 's past to Bard's works

Robert W. Plyler
POSTED: January 10, 2009

Her Reason for Being

Since last summer, I've been reading the book which I will be reviewing second. During that time, other important publications have been piling up. Like Walt Disney's cartoon character, Scrooge McDuck, who keeps his billions in numbered money bins, yet stops in the middle of heavy traffic to pick up a penny, I'm greedy for books and am always looking for more of them with gusto.

During my autumn reading, there arrived "Her Reason for Being," a novel by Cassadaga resident Susan Crossett Dilks. The minute I finished the massive Shakespeare book, I reached immediately for it, because I've read it before while it was still in the planning stages, and I knew it was living history of our nation and area of the nation.

The plot begins about 20 years after the end of the U.S. Civil War and carries us through the years when the rest of the world was embroiled in World War I - although the United States had not yet decided to enter.

The novel is set mostly in Buffalo , although the main characters often travel, including trips to Dunkirk, Chautauqua Institution and Lily Dale. The central focus is shared by two women whose lives are quite different, although they interact in both major and minor ways throughout the plot.

Lizzie Knapp is the wife of a successful business executive in the days when Buffalo was one of the most prosperous and fastest-growing cities in our country. Giving birth to child after child, she finds herself chafing in a world in which she is given little to do other than pick out expensive and fashionable clothes and decide where to display the good china in the newest Delaware Avenue mansion her husband's ambition has caused to be their temporary home. There are trained servants to deal with the children. What is she to do?

Maggie Trusler begins as an orphan, 14 years old, trying to manage her younger brother and sister as they leave their home in Central New York and set off to Buffalo to live with their only living relative. By hard work and extreme individual talent, she will become a well-known musical artist and published author. But, does this hard-driving woman know the boundary between art and real life?

The author whose work came most frequently to mind as I was reading Dilks' book was E.L. Doctorow, who spoke last summer at Chautauqua. Doctorow has mastered the art of taking fictional characters and surrounding them with real historical people, both the famous and significant but little known.

"Her Reason for Being" takes these two women and strews their paths with people who were part of that period of history. Susan B. Anthony, Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger and a wealth of similar figures put their marks on the lives of one or both women.

Throughout the book, the author provides a firm and enjoyable narrative. Her word choice is varied, and never sounds artificial, except when it should do so, such as when the Knapps are showing off their superiority to the lesser folks of their community.

Neither woman is an artificial creation. Throughout most of the book, the reader likes both women, although both can be tactless, weak and self-centered - just as any living person can be at times.

At 602 pages, the novel is very long. Indeed, it could probably be easily divided into two separate books. The author has certainly researched the period of the book extensively and accurately. Although it never bored me and I couldn't put my finger on any event which should have been left out of it, I did get the feeling, after a while, that it was unlikely that every historical event of the period would affect these two individuals so directly.

Just as two examples, St. Paul 's Cathedral, the Episcopal cathedral of Buffalo, most certainly did burn down in the 19th century, and it wouldn't be surprising if Maggie, the church's organist, might be injured in the fire. The Germans certainly did sink the ocean liner Lusitania in 1915, and it's possible that the boyfriend of Lizzie's youngest daughter might have been aboard. None of it is unbelievable, but the coincidences do pile up.

Still, it's a great read and a pleasurable study of life in the past century. I found myself caring about what happened to these people and greatly enjoying the discovery of those events.

"Her Reason for Being" was published by Author House in July 2008. As of this writing, it is not available through the Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Library System.

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