
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Xe Sands
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By:
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Kathleen Rooney
Library Journal Editors' Pick
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.
©2016 Kathleen Rooney (P)2017 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















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delightful stroll through new york
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One of the best audiobooks I have listened to in ages
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Charming and brilliant career woman of the 40’s thru her 80’s
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Enjoyed unique perspective and telling
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It wasn't until after I finished the novel that I realize that Kathleen Rooney's inspiration for this character was a real person. Like her fictional counterpart, Margaret Fishback was a poet and copywriter for R.H. Macys during the 1930's, becoming highly successful in both roles.
As she makes her way through the streets of the city, our protagonist recalls her best moments: the publication of her first book, meeting Max (the man she eventually marries), giving birth to her son. And her challenges: struggling to adjust to married life, going through a severe bout of depression, her painful divorce, losing her best friend.
Watching a character grow old is so interesting because it underlines the fact that getting older doesn't erase the essence of who we are. That's why for me, experiencing Lillian's zest for life, her sense of curiosity and sharp mind, and seeing how consistent those traits remained throughout her life, was so very refreshing.
Rooney's writing is witty and illuminating and I admire her ability to write a novel so intimate that at times it almost reads like a memoir. To me Lillian Boxfish belongs in the canon of characters representing a generation of women that were so ahead of their times they were feminist icons before that was even a thing.
I became a fan of Xe Sans listening to her narration of Euphoria and The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty. After you've been listening to audiobooks for a while, you can tell when a narrator has done her homework and has prepared well to perform a story rather that just "read" it. I think Sans’s evocative, sultry voice was the perfect match for this novel. The conversation between the author and the narrator at the end of the audio, was a unexpected but wonderful bonus!
Lillian takes a stroll down memory lane!
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Fabulous story
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Narrator
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Wonderful book!
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performance excellence!
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Solvitur Ambulando
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