A Freewheelin' Time

February 11, 2008
In July 1961, Rotolo, a shy 17-year-old from Queens, met an up-and-coming young folk singer named Bob Dylan at an all-day folk festival at Riverside Church in Manhattan, and her life changed forever. For the next few years, Suze and Bobby lived a freewheeling life amid the bohemians in the emerging folk scene in Greenwich Village. Rotolo offers brief glimpses of the denizens populating the new music scene below 14th Street in the early '60s and recalls the excitement as writers and musicians like Dylan wandered in and out of each other's lives and apartments, trading music and lyrics to produce a new sound that would change American music. Yet as the woman who's clutching Dylan's arm on the cover of his second album Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
, Rotolo doesn't give us a very freewheelin' memoir. She offers shallow, almost schoolgirl-like reflections on the man she loved and lived with for three years. In a dull and plodding manner, Rotolo provides no new insights into Dylan, claiming, as have so many, that he is mysterious and enigmatic. In an excerpt from one of her journals, she writes ambivalently that she believes in his genius and that he is an extraordinary writer, but that she doesn't think he's an honorable person.

April 1, 2008
New Yorkbased artist Rotolothe smiling young woman walking arm in arm with Bob Dylan on the cover of the album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"has written an account of her doomed love affair with the legendary musician and her own search for identity and fulfillment. Rotolo's poetic style adds charm to an engaging memoir that touches on a variety of personal, musical, and political topics that have long held Dylan fans' interest. Unfortunately, she doesn't dig as deeply as she could, and fans will learn nothing new about Dylan. But this is much more than just Rotolo's perspective of Dylan's meteoric musical ascent and its effect on their on-again, off-again relationship. It is also the story of a creative, politically active, and sensitive young woman struggling to find her voice in the male-dominated Greenwich Village folk and theater milieus. Essentially a collection of amusing anecdotes loosely held together by her connection to Dylan, this book should provide light entertainment to readers who can't get enough Dylan or those looking for a well-written firsthand account of the 1960s Greenwich Village art scene. Recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 1/08.]Douglas King, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2008
One of the most recognizable album-cover images of the 1960s shows a young man, underdressed for the winter in a light suede jacket, leaning into a young woman. Rotolo was that young woman, and in this uneven, overlong, still fascinating memoir, she tells the story behind that photo and her love for Bob Dylan. Rotolo met Dylan in 1961; she was 17, he 20. While Dylan is the bedrock of her memoirwithout him, would there be a book?he isnt the whole story. Rotolo discusses her own background (Italian heritage, Communist parents, inability to fit in growing up in Queens, the craziness and sexism of the era), but the dominant setting is the Greenwich Village folk scene. In informal, conversational style, Rotolo recalls those who made that scene, many of them famous but none more so than the complicated Dylan. Given his formidable presence, Rotolos adamant refusal to be more than a string on his guitar in the book is admirable. The moments when she comes most alive in its pages are the most compelling.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)