Crosspoints: A Novel of Choice [Paperback]

Alexandra York (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 23, 2003

WHAT IS A "CROSSPOINT"?

IS IT FICTION OR REAL LIFE?

IS IT SELF-DESTRUCTION OR SELF-RENEWAL?

IS IT CRISIS OR OPPORTUNITY?

THE CHOICE IS YOURS In an innovative presentation of high drama and higher ideals, CROSSPOINTS A Novel of Choice combines all of the what-happens-next intrigue and fascinating characters of serious Romantic fiction with a soul searching motivational theme that can change the direction of your day-to-day life. More accurate than "crossroads" or "turning points," the word "crosspoints," coined by the author, could become part of your own vocabulary. Set in New York’s glitzy art world, the story revolves around one sculptor’s struggle to regain or reject the artistic and idealistic visions of his youth. Other characters include Tara Niforous (a Greek-American marine archeologist with whom he falls in love), her Greek mentor/employer Dimitrios Kokonas (who loves her, too), trend-setting socialites, philosophically opposed painters, sculptors, art critics, dealers and mentors, ethnic Greek families, and a religion-tormented museum director. The story is about choice—the many choices offered to these various characters in the novel, as they are offered to each of us in real life. Smart, savvy and sexy. Idealistic but realistic. Timely yet timeless. Cleverly transversing the literary and the commercial with its controversial themes and exotic locales, CROSSPOINTS is nothing less than "a love story for thinking people" that intricately weaves thought-provoking ideas within the framework of its unusual and compelling love triangle, boldly challenging America’s obsessions with money, fame, art (and non-art), mysticism, emotionalism, sex and a variety of "quick-fix" thrills in a way that will stimulate your mind while it stirs your heart. Contemporary and traditional art forms, ancient Greece and present-day America, free will and determinism, and reason and mysticism are all explored under the unflinching glare of Alexandra York’s independent mind, original voice, and romantic soul.

Editorial Reviews

Review

. . . a psychological thriller. . . the reader becomes engrossed in the self-induced fate of richly drawn characters... Innovative, powerfully motivational novel. -- Dr. Michael J. Hurd, Talk Show Host: “Solutions--Not Excuses.

. . . nothing new in literature to rival the wonder of Ayn Rand’s FOUNTAINHEAD. Until now. CROSSPOINTS. . . a profound work. . . -- Bill Danks, Borders Books

. . .engrossing read, with characters who are strikingly drawn. . . a clever plot. The ideas. . .will stir up a hornet’s nest. -- Howard Dickman, Ass’t Managing Editor, Reader’s Digest

. . .full of differing values and differing choices, in life and in art, full of surprises. . .well-plotted, romantic novel. . -- Joan Kennedy Taylor, Laissez Faire Book Club

about the transforming power of ideals. How can we not be seduced by a story that offers so much hope? -- Sherry Lazarus Ross, Editor in Chief, Art Renewal Center

From the Inside Flap

Set primarily in New York’s glamorous and ever controversial art world, CROSSPOINTS is the story of one sculptor’s struggle to regain or reject the artistic and idealistic visions of his youth. Leon Skillman is rich and famous, cynical and smart. Handsome and glib, he is the darling of socialites, the press, art critics and gossip columnists. It is his introduction to Tara Niforous, Greek-American archeologist, that disrupts his smug existence, bringing his art into conflict because of his unanticipated love for her.

Tara lives for her ancient bronze and marble "gods" but falls irresistibly in love with Leon, who looks and acts like one in the flesh. Tara’s older Greek employer and nautical department head of Athens’s National Archeological Museum, Dimitrios Kokonas, is silently and profoundly in love with Tara, who was previously his protégé and is now his colleague. Intensely romantic but painfully shy about love, he vows to come out in the open at last and fight for her.

Settings in Greece, Turkey, Palm Beach and Manhattan provide exotic backgrounds for explorations into archeology, high society, sex, drugs, money, family, fame, art and love. Characters include socialites, painters, sculptors, and art critics and dealers. Contemporary and traditional art forms, ancient Greece and present-day America, free will and determinism, and reason and mysticism are explored within the framework of a love triangle that must be resolved between Tara and the two men who love her.

The story is about choice—the many choices offered to various characters in the novel, as they are offered to each of us in real life. Kostas Niforous (Tara’s Greek-born father) calls these moments of choice "Crosspoints," as he tries to teach his rebellious sixteen-year-old daughter, Kally, his lessons about life. Hence, the novel’s thematic title, CROSSPOINTS A Novel of Choice, comes to life on every page.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 452 pages
• Publisher: Xlibris (September 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1413418953
• ISBN-13: 978-1413418958
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,934,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alexandra York presently draws from her multi-faceted background to focus on writing and lecturing on the arts and the culture as well as writing fiction.

In addition to authoring five nonfiction books (one a Book-of-the-Month Club selection), Alexandra has also been published in magazine and newspaper articles, book and movie reviews and poetry. In other media, she both wrote and performed a bi-weekly feature on WPIX-TV Channel 11 Evening News in New York and wrote and hosted two different Talk Shows that tracked the contemporary performing arts for ABC Radio Network. As an author, she has been a guest on many major talk shows, including "The Today Show," "Larry King Live," "To Tell the Truth," "AM New York," "AM Los Angeles," "AM Philadelphia," "Wake-Up Houston," ABC's "Eyewitness News," and she has been interviewed on hundreds of radio shows. As a performer, she appeared as principal actress in dozens of TV and radio commercials in America and Europe, culminating that aspect of her career in a year-long tour of the U.S. as an exclusive TV spokeswoman for Clairol, Inc. In person, she has lectured extensively at Town Hall Celebrity Series, private organizations, corporations, and universities.

Alexandra is published in England, Australia, Mexico,South America, Spain, and Russia, as well as the United States and Canada. Aside from her self-help books (Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, Van Nostrand, Ballantine and Berkley-Jove), her work has also appeared in publications as varied as Reader's Digest (Domestic and International), Vital Speeches, The New York Times, USA Today, Vogue, New Woman, Chronicles, The Humanist, The Intellectual Activist, Reason, American Arts Quarterly, The Journal of Ayn Rand, The Objectivist Navigator, America Artist, and Confrontation Literary Journal. She was for six years the Editor for ART Ideas, quarterly arts and culture magazine published by American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) a New-York-based nonprofit educational arts foundation of which she is the Founding President: www.ART-21.org

Alexandra received the 1997 Whiting Memorial Award for outstanding service to the cultural world from the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry, where she nows serves as an elected Mentor. She is listed in Who's Who of American Women and Who's Who in America. She is a member of The Authors' Guild and The National Arts Club, the latter for which she serves on the Literary Committee. Her latest book (2006) is titled OVER THE YEARS: Poems, Lyrics, Songs, Prose. Her novel, CROSSPOINTS A Novel of Choice--set in New York's controversial art world explores the subject of free will, pertaining especially to romantic, personal, and artistic choices--was published in America in 2004, Russia in 2007, and worldwide Spnish translation in 2010. With her husband, Barrett Randell, she divides her time between New York City, Bucks County, PA and Vermont.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars LOVE AND ART, May 14, 2004

By 

William Bucko "Bill Bucko" (Mt. Clemens, MI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Crosspoints: A Novel of Choice (Paperback)

This is a marvelous love story-and an exciting novel of ideas. An unsophisticated, idealistic archaeologist, Tara Niforous, falls in love-or thinks she does-with Leon Skillman, a potentially great sculptor who seems to embody her ideals. In fact, he has betrayed his soul, becoming a vicious, opportunistic cynic. Meanwhile, Tara's long-time mentor, the noble but aloof Dimitrios, realizes that he himself is in love with her. The action moves from an exciting underwater dive off the Greek islands to the corrupt, intellectually bankrupt New York "art" scene-and to a showdown in which Tara finally sees what kind of "sculpture" Leon has been spewing out.

This is a richly imagined novel. Alexandra York is a vivid stylist, and probes her multi-layered characters deeply, taking us inside their minds with enormous technical skill. She also understands how the choices we make affect our lives-as we stand at "crosspoints" (Tara's immigrant father's insightful confusion of "crossroads" and "turning points").

The first 9 chapters appeared (under the title "Becoming") in the "Atlantean Press Review," a showcase for writers inspired by Ayn Rand's literary legacy. Ms. York is now the third of the Review's authors to see their completed novel in print-preceded by Edward Cline's "Sparrowhawk" and Andrew Bernstein's "Heart of a Pagan."

Writing a good novel of ideas is a challenging task. The characters and events must be meaningful. They must also be exciting; one must never forget that one is writing fiction, not a treatise. As Ayn Rand said, the function of art is not to teach, but to show. But if a writer uses characters merely as vehicles for ideas-if he sacrifices them to some message he wants to convey-if he piles ideas on their backs like hods on a hod-carrier-the result may be closer to a tract than a novel. (That, sadly, was the case with "Heart of a Pagan.")

As Miss Rand observed: "... abstract ideas are proper in fiction only when they are subordinated to the story. Not when the story is artificially devised to expound some thesis. That is why propaganda writers fail. That is why propaganda stories are always so false and dull." ("Letters," p. 159)

Alexandra York's focus is where it should be-on story-telling-at least 90% of the time. Halfway through "Crosspoints" I did find it was getting too preachy; the characters were talking (albeit beautifully) at greater length about art than the story warranted. And I cringed at the name Ms. York inflicted on her art gallery-a heavy-handed borrowing from the world of "Atlas Shrugged." I winced when one of her minor characters started lecturing about Aristotle. (Fortunately, the other characters cut him off.) Admirers of Ayn Rand's novels would do well to note how seldom Miss Rand mentions or refers to Aristotle in her own fiction (as opposed to non-fiction); three of her four novels do not mention the great philosopher even a single time! Her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," refers to him only 3 times in more than a thousand pages.

Fortunately, "Crosspoint"'s occasional faults are far outweighed by its virtues. It is full of exciting plot twists, as well as dramatic insights about the role of art in life-an issue about which Ms. York, a prime mover in today's revival of romantic, representational art-knows a great deal. This book deserves to be the # 2 bestseller-right after Ed Cline's "Sparrowhawk."

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A safe place, December 31, 2003

By 

Warren C. Gibson "laurelcreek" (San Carlos, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Crosspoints: A Novel of Choice (Paperback)

My favorite art gallery displays only "romantic realism." I call it a place of refuge because I know I will only find beauty there. I can let down my guard -- the guard against ugliness and irrationality that I have to maintain in today's world. That's how I feel about "Crosspoints." You can be sure that although there will be startling plot twists, you need never be on guard. Beauty and rationality and achievement are held up as ideals, and while there are a couple of sordid scenes, they are there only for contrast and realism. This novel approaches Rand's "Fountainhead" in its integration of a gripping plot with an intense philosophical message.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Romantic Renaissance, July 21, 2004

By 

William Danks (Upper Darby, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Crosspoints: A Novel of Choice (Paperback)

For well over a half century there has been nothing new in literature to rival the sheer aesthetic wonder of Ayn Rand's novel THE FOUNTAINHEAD. Until now. Alexandra York's CROSSPOINTS follows the grand Romantic Realist tradition and expands upon it with a profound work that's sure to delight any reader who can appreciate an intricate and important plot developed through masterful use of language.

CROSSPOINTS tells the story of the beautiful young Greek-American marine archaeologist Tara Niforous and the two extraordinary men who love her. The first is her renowned Greek mentor Dimitrios Kokonas. The other is Leon Skillman, a celebrated American sculptor. Although she is attracted to both men in different ways at different times, she ultimately has to chose only one.

Within this basic dramatic structure there emerges a novel so rich and dense in both characterization and plotting that its depths are truly astounding. In viewing the love triangle of the main characters we are also presented with searing portraits of everything from contemporary New York's 'post-modern' art world to classical Greek antiquities, from wild scenes of sexual abandon to those of touching family life, from the luxurious dwellings of the super-rich to the plain studios of working artists. This is decidedly a novel of ideas--a novel of conflicting values and philosophies, yet it is also an exciting and entertaining story of larger-than-life characters making crucial real-life choices in exotic settings.

For those weary readers who have ceased to enjoy most of what's written today, this novel will be a welcome surprise. Its printed pages come alive with amazing visual imagery and sensuous details that continually advance the story in a fresh voice that's both intellectually and emotionally satisfying. CROSSPOINTS is quite simply the finest work of fiction yet produced in the 21st Century. It's also a promise of things to come--a brilliant first novel in what should become a brilliantly stunning fiction career.

--Bill Danks,
author of PROMETHEUS REBOUNDS