Exclusive interview with author Carol M. Cram and a review of her new novel about a female composer in 19th century Vienna
Rating: 3 Stars
Review by Gabrielle Pantera
“A Woman of Note draws upon my love of classical music and the piano,” says author Carol M. Cram. “I’ve been playing the piano since I was five years old. And although I will never be a concert pianist like Isabette in the novel, I get a great deal of pleasure out of my daily practice. My love of music led me naturally to creating a character who plays the piano and composes.”
In early nineteenth-century Vienna, Isabette Grüber captivates audiences as a piano virtuoso. But music is a male-dominated profession so Isabette keeps secret her own compositions. Isabette meets the dazzling singer Amelia Mason and the composer Josef Hauser. Music is Isabette’s constant through heartbreak and triumph.
A Woman of Note is a fantastic story idea. What if some of the great music we all know was actually written by a woman and we didn’t know? The lead character Isabetta has interactions with many famous composers of the day including Chopin, Schubert and Berlioz. Cram’s appreciation of music shines through in her descriptions. However, the plot revolves so tightly around Isabette that the supporting characters seem shallow. The book includes book club questions, author’s note, list of compositions, acknowledgments and bibliography.
“When I started the novel, I had the idea that few women were composers in the 19th Century,” says Cram. “Like most people, I had heard of only a small handful, and presumed that women just didn’t compose much. As I dug into my research of music history, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that women played a much larger role as composers than I had originally thought.”
Cram says she researched a great deal about composers of the period and also studied women composers, particularly Fanny Mendelsohn and Clara Schumann.
“Clara’s story really helped me to develop Isabette’s story,” says Cram. “Clara Schumann is probably best known as the wife of Robert Schumann. However, as I discovered in my research Clara was a very important figure in the musical history of the 19th Century in her own right. As a rival of Liszt, she was one of the period’s top concert pianists. She was also a composer, a musical editor, and an innovator in addition to being the mother of seven children and the wife of a mentally ill composer who died in his mid-forties after spending two years in an asylum.”
In addition to doing a great deal of reading at the Music Library at the University of British Columbia, Crum traveled to Vienna where much of the novel takes place.
Cram’s first published novel was The Towers of Tuscany about a woman who’s an artist in 14th Century Tuscany. Cram says she was inspired by her husband, Gregg Simpson, a full time painter. Tuscany was shortlisted for the Bath Novel Award.
Cram has also written dozens textbooks in business communications and computer applications. Cram continues to write textbooks for Cengage Learning, with four to be published in 2016. Neither of her novels has yet to be optioned for film or television. For over 20 years Cram was an instructor at Capilano University in North Vancouver, B.C.
Cram is currently writing her third novel, Upstaged. Cram says the genesis for Upstaged was a paper she wrote about the Old Price Riots for her Masters of Drama at the University of Toronto in the 1980s.
Cram lives on Bowen Island, a small island that is twenty minutes by ferry ride from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Cram was born in Victoria and grew up in Vancouver. Schooled in Britain, she received a B.A. in English Language & Literature from the University of Reading and a Post Graduate Certificate in Education at the University of Durham.
A Woman of Note by Carol M. Cram. Paperback: 368 pages, Publisher: Lake Union Publishing (September 8, 2015). Language: English, ISBN: 9781503946835 $ 14.95
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