It’s New Year’s Eve, 1984, and ex advertising maverick Lillian Boxfish, now 84, goes for a walk around Manhattan. She makes stops at meaningful haunts from her life, restaurants, bars, buildings, parks, revisiting her life’s big moments, weighing the cause/effect of old choices, remembering love and relationships long over but not forgotten. On Lillian Boxfish’s journey, we journey with her, into her present via memories of her past.
The book is very readable. Rooney peppers the narrative with nice bits of writing, some good character development, and an intriguing portrait of then/now New York. I just didn’t love character of Lillian Boxfish; the older version I liked okay, but I found the younger version of the character pretty obnoxious and unlikable, and didn’t buy her advertising genius. A fine read, but didn’t love it.
