I love Lily Brett more every time I read the latest book she has written. This is another collection of essays about her life in New York and how she is coping with something I would rather wasn’t happening to me, which is growing old.
Lily makes perfect sense to me when she says she doesn’t want to be run over by a bus in Lexington Avenue because she doesn’t want the newspapers to say elderly woman hit by bus. She says anyone from the age of 65 is given the description ‘elderly’, a fate which 64 year olds can escape. Lily says that as she is now 72 she is very careful to watch out for buses, and I understand her reasoning completely.
Something I share with Lily Brett is the inability to read maps and, in general, to have no sense of direction. I love her for that as well. Oh, and another inability: to play sport of any kind. I spent my last year of high school in a beautiful State school which made me wish I had always gone to public schools; however, like Lily Brett I was aghast and afraid when I realised I was expected to participate in, and enjoy, gymnastics and such things as jumping over a vaulting horse.
Lily Brett’s life in New York still fascinates me. She loves the people, the city and all it has to offer. I first discovered her writing when I read Too Many Men a long time ago and I have read all of her works since then. She is simply a magical writer and her honesty and self-awareness make reading her stories of her life, as well as her novels, a totally pleasurable experience.
If you haven’t read Lily Brett before you should start now. 5 out of 5 with a bullet.
Penguin
Random House Australia
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