 | A book well worth reading.
This is a "Wow!" book, hard work, not because it is excellent literature, for there are tons of other books also well written, or merely because it has a fluid and gripping plot to make it most entertaining, for there are also other, though fewer, books that have a well thought and structured plot (some of the very best thrillers are based on good plots), but because its very deep message is placed point-blank in the middle of the reader's mind.
"Crosspoints" is a novel of choice down to the exact precision of what a choice, any choice, really means and implies. Our whole existence is a long and intricate intersection of roads that advance in different directions. "Crosspoints" teaches us all how and what decision to take at each juncture and what happens if we don't take a decision, if we allow chance to decide by default the direction to be taken at the crossroad reached. It's a book to keep you awake and alert in the best Aynrandian tradition. You'll find this out by reading it.
The background of this book is Art, and Alexandra York is a well-known expert in this heavily injured area. Art emerges as its main theme through its characters and York uses it to shrewdly master a precise attack against "modern art" which, in its various forms and ways of expression, has since very long established itself from fact to the practically unquestioned dogma of being by far superior to what the "moderns" term "classical art". Further on, these "moderns" (who never defined the term) assert with a gnash of their teeth that they cannot be moved aside since there simply doesn't exist anything else nor better. This sufficed to scare any opponents into what the self-established "avant-garde" calls "the caves of the past", where the adversaries keep to themselves and neither dare to present battle nor even seem to recognize that a totally different movement of art, with totally different ideals, is developing. Which one this is will be revealed in the book.
"Crosspoints" dares to go into the open and sets up the confrontation by using the various relations of its characters as the opposition between the ideas held by each side of the contenders and the choices that must be taken as well as the choices that are avoided and, thus, operate by default, the result determining the future.
Since "Crosspoints" is a novel and not a boring technical paper, it contains a love triangle of such perfect intensity that it suffices by itself to turn the whole story into a page-turner for the reader impatient to know what will Tara, the main female character, decide as she is at breakneck speed torn between two men who symbolize quite different standpoints. Tara faces, as York cleverly devised and the reader knows, only two opposing paths to choose from and swerving toward any of them will not just determine her own future but also the life and fortune of those that surround her and partake in her life. During the process toward the goal of her definite decision, chips and whole batteries of levers fall into place and influence and determine not only the future life of the characters but also the outcome of the confrontation between noble ideals and ignoble purposes. Along the way, the reader himself will have to make up his own mind for he stands at the fulcrum, the "crosspoint" of his own life, and by deciding what position he will defend he will also point out the progression of his own existence.
There's only one small criticism I have to voice toward the author. Alexandra York, who in the meantime published poetry, lyrics, etc., copyrighted her novel in 2004, which means that for the last 5 years she left her readers on a long stretch of thirst without supplying them with another good novel. I hope she corrects this without delay.
|
CROSSPOINTS by Alexandra York
