Sassy Lillian Boxfish hasn't worked for R. H. Macy in 25 years but she still loves New York and the life it breathes into her. Elegant, possibly ever so slightly eccentric, she sets off on a before-dinner walk to work up a new appetite after unconsciously consuming an entire packet of Oreo's whilst on the phone to her son. We've all been there! In fact Oreo's crop up several times as the devil's own work, and this firmly roots Ms Boxfish in the present day setting of 1984. The walk takes us on a trip down memory lane, to the New York of the 1930s, a different era, a different world. Told in Lillian's own voice this narrative of an ageing and beautiful retro-perspective is written beautifully and eloquently with the ease of injection of colour and textures, but mostly people and the New York community. Ingenius phrasing, golden nuggets of insightfulness, it's easy to conjur Lillian and I for one adore her. Truly beautiful literary fiction.

I enjoyed reading this so much. Lillian Boxfish is such an admirable character and her life is so colorful. The supporting characters were also likeable and interesting, as was the story. This book could, at times, read a bit slow but it was more in a relaxing way, as the writer's elegant prose moves one through the story, rather than in a boring way.

A thoroughly delightful story about New York City from the 30s to the 80s. Also, it's about women's rights, through the eyes of someone who had a talent for poetry and advertising. I learned so much from this book like better communication and the results using your kind and realistic voice rather than being fearful. Thank you NetGalley, St. Martins Press and Kathleen Rooney for this enjoyable read.

The author takes us on a walk the length of Manhattan with Lillian Boxfish, an elderly woman who many years ago held a well-paid position at Macy's. While on this New Year's Eve walk she encounters many situations, some potentially dangerous and others heart warming, While strolling she also tells the story of her life. While an interesting read, I never fully connected with the character and her narration of her walk and her life. For me, it was missing something to keep me fully engaged.

~ It’s the last day of 1984, and 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish is about to take a walk.

As she traverses a grittier Manhattan, a city anxious after an attack by a still-at-large subway vigilante, she encounters bartenders, bodega clerks, chauffeurs, security guards, bohemians, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be—in surprising moments of generosity and grace. While she strolls, Lillian recalls a long and eventful life that included a brief reign as the highest-paid advertising woman in America—a career cut short by marriage, motherhood, divorce, and a breakdown.

A love letter to city life—however shiny or sleazy—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. (via Goodreads)
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk is the first 2017 release that I actually read in 2017, but I'm not sure that I liked it. It wasn't a bad novel, it was just a distant one.

It really was a love letter to New York on New Year's Eve, in all its strange glory, and with all its different people. Lillian was snarky, stubborn and still hopeful, which was delightful to read.

I would have liked to learn more about her as a career woman, because it was so much a part of her life, but it felt like it was just glanced over because it wasn't what she was doing at the time of the book.

However, I had two large issues with the novel. My biggest issue is the entire plot of the novel is summed up in the summary above. My other big issue was that every character was a caricature of a real person, and we never got close enough to any of them to really feel invested in the story. My favorite minor character was Penny, the little kid from the restaurant, and I think she had three lines.

That's why this is a three star review for me. It comes out tomorrow, and if this sounds more like your cup of tea, you can pick up a copy through Amazon, Indiebound, or your other favorite bookseller.

three stars

~ 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, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in January of 2017.