I really loved this book!! It is so well written! I found it so interesting with it being jam-packed with historical information about NY. I can’t believe this is her debut novel. I fell in love with Lillian and boy was it fun strolling down memory lane with her telling us all about her life as one of the most talented ad women for R.H Macy.
Lillian walks all over NY city on New Year’s Eve in 1984. She has been around for 85 years. This is certainly enough time to see how things have changed all over her city. She lived an extraordinary life. I love that her character is loosely based on a real woman; Margaret Fishback. I feel I can not do this book justice by telling you about it myself. Everyone should read this book, if not for the story, the information inside alone.
The Amazon Book Review:An Amazon Best Book of January 2017: This is a novel about an 85 year-old woman who wends her way to a party. I may have lost you already, but Kathleen Rooney and her delightful Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk will not. Turns out, Ms. Boxfish is a fascinating woman who has led a fascinating life, the details of which she teases out before bidding adieu to the year 1984. One of the most talented and successful ad women for R.H. Macy’s in the 1930s (the character is based on real-life ad woman and author, Margaret Fishback), Ms. Boxfish was once the toast of New York. She reminisces about the time she asked her boss to pay her the same as her less accomplished male counterparts. Seeing as though that’s a battle still being fought today, you can guess how that went, but this incident hints at the kind of woman our feisty flâneuse is. You will learn more about Lillian’s life as a “Mad Woman,” and the one she didn’t anticipate as a wife and mother…Her story takes a dark turn or two as well, and you will root for her as she responds with her signature wit and mettle.
There are beloved works in the canon of great literature featuring famous walkers (James Joyce’s Ulysses and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway immediately come to mind). One of the joys in reading them is the motley cast of characters our heroes and heroines encounter along the way, and Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk is no exception. Whether it’s a bartender, a bodega employee, or a group of thugs, Lillian confronts them with the same infectious curiosity, compassion, and pluck. It’s a testament to Rooney’s writing chops that you’ll want to walk with Lillian as she ponders, all the while paying homage to New York in its gritty glory. –Erin Kodicek
Favorite Excerpts:
‘People who command respect are never as widely known as people who command attention.’ P 225
‘Burning a bridge, as any tactician will tell you, sometimes saves more than it costs.’ P 233
‘If you love something, know that it will leave on a day you are far from ready.’ P 15
‘Most of what we consider beauty is manufactured, but the fact of that manufacture does not make it unbeautiful.’ P 82
‘Solutions of style have a greater moral force than those of obligation.’ P 123
‘Why do people feel they need to have children to act like children? Why not eat Cracker Jack in the street if that’s your pleasure? Why not scuff the leaves or romp in the snow? Cut out the damn middleman and do what you want.’ P 169
‘If one knocks oneself out of one’s routine—and in so doing knocks others gently out of theirs—then one can now and again create these momentary opportunities to be better than one is.’ P 156
Little fun fact about R H Macy and why the star is the logo: “That star,” I say, “comes from a tattoo that Mr. R. H. Macy himself got at the age of fifteen. Back when he was a sailor. He worked on a whaling ship out of Nantucket, the Emily Morgan.”
Topics I found to be of interest:
- ‘The World Trade Center- It went by the name of Radio Row before the Port Authority—that practically paramilitary factotum of the odious Robert Moses—demolished it all in 1966, citing eminent domain.’ P 123
- The Hart–Celler Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965
- Battery Park City -(Constructed on landfill. Three million cubic yards of it, Rock and soil and garbage excavated during the erection of the World Trade Center.)
- In 1911 she had seen, but had not treated—they had been untreatable for being dead—the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Garment workers, she told me when she visited us the summer after that disaster, those were the victims. Trapped in a sweatshop, locked in by the owners, 146 people—123 of them women—alive and at work and then suddenly dead.
- Automats- An automat is a fast food restaurant where simple foods and drink are served by vending machines. The world’s first automat was named Quisisana, which opened in Berlin, Germany in 1895- (Wikipedia)
- ‘My mother would not let me forget that although the World’s Tallest Building was in New York, President Hoover had pushed the button to turn on its lights remotely from my old hometown of Washington, D.C.’ P 42
- ‘Delmonico’s Steak House- So many ubiquitous dishes were invented here: eggs Benedict, Manhattan clam chowder, chicken á la King, and baked Alaska. P 148
- ‘Solvitur ambulando: It is solved by walking.’
About the Author:
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She teaches English and Creative Writing at DePaul University and is the author of eight books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, including the novel O, Democracy! (Fifth Star Press, 2014) and the novel in poems Robinson Alone (Gold Wake Press, 2012). With Eric Plattner, she is the co-editor of René Magritte: Selected Writings (University of Minnesota Press, 2016 and Alma Books, 2016). A winner of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, her reviews and criticism have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times Magazine, The Rumpus, The Nation the Poetry Foundation website and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and her second novel, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, was published by St. Martin’s Press in January of 2017.
(304 p) St Martin’s Press 1/17/17
978-1250113320
Press My Spine 