A funny and moving novel based on Lily Brett's time as a rock journalist in London and the States in the sixties.
Lily Brett was born in Germany and came to Melbourne with her parents in 1948. She is one of Australia's most loved, prolific and successful authors. She has published six works of fiction, seven books of poetry, and three essay collections to much critical acclaim in Australia and around the world. Her novel Lola Bensky won France's Prix Medicis Etranger in 2014. Lily Brett is married to the Australian painter David Rankin. They have three children and live in New York. lilybrett.com
Brett's latest novel (following 2006's You Gotta Have Balls) is a poignant and autobiographical rumination on the inner life of an Australian music journalist named Lola Bensky. Beginning her career in 1967 when she's 19 years old, she interviews emerging talent like Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, and Jim Morrison while fixating on being overweight and embarking on a barrage of diets. Lola feels ashamed of her excess pounds because parents Renia and Edek suffered from malnutrition in a German concentration camp during WWII. Although Lola's career is taking off, she feels like a disappointment to her family, having never graduated from high school; and despite Renia's intervention, Lola remains heavy. Her survivor's guilt increases as she grows older, leading to panic attacks when she's in her 30s. Lola peers into other people's lives as she hides behind her role as a writer, "seeing how their habits and histories came together to make them who they were." Brett creates a fascinating portrait of a woman searching for meaning and connections stolen from her family. Agent: Anne Edelstein, Anne Edelstein Literary Agency. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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