Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

 

I downloaded a few books to read on a short vacation I took recently. One of them was meant to be the new Sally Rooney novel. I began reading it and thought it was very different from her other books and it was only when I got to the end of the ebook and read the notes on the author that I realized it was written by Kathleen Rooney, an American writer. Luckily Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk is the type of book that appeals to me. It tells the story of 85 year old Lillian Blowfish, a long retired successful advertising copywriter and poet, as she walks around Manhattan on New Year's Eve in 1984. As she walks she ruminates on her life as an ambitious young career woman between the World Wars, her friendships and her marriage. She meets various people while rambling and the chapters alternate between past and present. New York City in 1984 has undergone a lot of changes since she arrived in the 1920s - there is more crime, homelessness and racial tension and there is an AIDS epidemic in full swing but Lillian still loves the city. It is her home and, despite pleas from her son, she refuses to leave it. She is a fascinating woman, intelligent, talented, glamourous and fiercely independent. Her life has had its ups and downs but she is a survivor. 

As well as discovering I had the wrong Rooney I also learned that the fictional  Lillian Boxfish is loosely based on Margaret Fishback, a poet and advertising copywriter for R.H. Macy's during the 1930's who, like Lillian, was once ''the highest-paid advertising woman in the world.'' Fishback died at the age of 85 in 1985. 

This book is an interesting look at NYC over the years. It also talks about the challenges facing an ambitious, talented working woman who married and had a child in the 1940s. It may not have been the book I was looking for but I'm glad I read it.