Book Review: Lillian Boxfish takes a walk - K. Rooney

Such an amazing life, this of Lillian Boxfish!
This book is witty, glamours, funny and on top of everything it is an hymn to NY city throughout the years.
On New Year's Eve 1984, Lillian takes a 10 miles walk in Manhattan and she takes us through her past and present, her great career and her secrets, her old pals and new ones, her youthfulness and her old age. She also observes the changes that have taken place in the city that she loves.
A great read, very refreshing!

Overall rating:  6,5     Plot: 7     Writing style: 6      Cover:  9

Title:Lillian Boxfish takes a walk

Author: Kathleen Rooney
Publisher: Daunt Books Publishing
Pages: 288
Publication year: 2017

The Plot:

When 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish steps out of her apartment on New Year’s Eve in 1984, little does she know she’s about to embark on a journey across the whole of Manhattan.

Lillian is no ordinary 85-year-old. On her arrival to New York in the 1930s she took the city by storm, working her way up from writing copy for Macy’s department store to become the world’s highest paid advertising woman. Now, alone on New Year’s Eve, her usual holiday ritual in ruins, Lillian decides to take a walk. After all, it might be her last chance. Armed with only her mink coat and quick-witted charm, Lillian walks, and begins to reveal the story of her remarkable life.

Based on a true story, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk paints a portrait of an extraordinary woman across the canvas of a changing America: from the Jazz Age to the AIDS epidemic; the Great Depression to the birth of hiphop.

The Author:

Kathleen Rooney is the author of several books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and the Chicago Tribune. She works as a senior lecturer in English and Creative Writing in Chicago where she teaches, among other things, a workshop on The Writer as Urban Walker.