Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.8
(100)
Kathleen Rooney
NOW A NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER A love letter to city life in all its guts and grandeur, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic; the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop. “In my reckless and undiscouraged youth,” Lillian Boxfish writes, “I worked in a walnut-paneled office thirteen floors above West Thirty-Fifth Street...” She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. It was a job that, she says, “in some ways saved my life, and in other ways ruined it.” Now it’s the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party. It’s chilly enough out for her mink coat and Manhattan is grittier now—her son keeps warning her about a subway vigilante on the prowl—but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be, while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways New York has changed—and has not. Lillian figures she might as well take her time. For now, after all, the night is still young.“Transporting...witty, poignant and sparkling.” —People (People Picks Book of the Week)
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More Details:
Author
Kathleen Rooney
Pages
304
Publisher
St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published Date
2017-01-17
ISBN
1250113334 9781250113337
Community ReviewsSee all
"I read this book for my English class and I really enjoyed it. It’s written in a way that English teachers would love, poetic in a witty and enjoyable way. I love the themes of coming to terms with time passing and how it has and has not affected you."
Ella
"Loved this book. The author designed this story to capture so many pinnacle moments of the main characters life with each memory floating in to the "walk" so comfortably. <br/>it is almost a 5 star for me.....definitely a 4.5<br/>"
J w
Jfly winslow
"New Years' Eve, 1984. Subway vigilante Bernard Goetz prowls Manhattan, the Twin towers still stand, and Lilian Boxfish, 84, spends the evening walking (not strolling) purposefully from her Murray HIll apartment to the Hudson river and back, reminiscing at each turn about her long, event-filled life in Manhattan: as a young office girl, a rising star in the advertising world, a successful poet, a wife, mother, and eventually bitter divorcee.<br/><br/>Lilian is a perplexing, often irritating character,rather too fond of her own cleverness (a fault we may ascribe to the author as well). Yet she remains perpetually interested in other people. A few of her observations:<br/><br/>“Among the many unsurprising facts of life that, when taken in aggregate, ultimately spell out the doom of our species is this: people who command respect are never as widely known as people who command attention" (p. 225) <br/><br/>“The neighborhood of verbal felicity in which I still resided had gone down, down, down. I kept living there: trimming the hedges, freshening up the paint--but everyone else had died or moved away". (p 227)<br/><br/>Lilian likes rap although "much of it is utter nonsense, to be sure" yet "it makes me happy , and also sad to think that his is where playful language is chershed now and where the verbosity that I and my clever friends prized so much has gone to reside: the slums". (p 189)"
Lesley Williams
"So while I didn't love this book quite as much as I wanted to, I still thought it was an interesting fictional look at an actual woman's (Margaret Fishback) life. Lillian is who I want to be at 85... still in love with her city and still willing to make human connections in an era that seems to have lost that ability. I loved the structure, it just didn't wow me as much as other books of the same type"
A P
Allie Peduto
"I never wanted this book to end. Listen to the audiobook — the narrator’s voice couldn’t have been more perfect. "
Kelli Taylor
"Fascinating read about a woman seemingly ahead of her time but still ensnared by all too common themes. Also a great glimpse of NYC as it matured in the modern era, with all its energy and pizazz — and horrors. I understand the book is based on the life of a real person, which is all the more intriguing."
Laine Susan
