A few years ago, I went to a session at the
Wheeler Centre where Lily Brett was reading from her book Lola Bensky. She was wonderful – funny, clever, entertaining – and
every since then I have had a massive girl crush on Lily Brett. I downloaded
her latest, Only in New York, as soon
as I found out about its existence but waited until last week to read it. The anticipation
of the pleasure it was going to bring me was almost as pleasurable as reading
the book itself…but not quite!
In Only
in New York, Brett shares a series of vignettes about her life in New York:
the walks she takes, the people she meets and the places she visits and loves. In
the process, Brett skillfully weaves in the New York of the past, the Melbourne
of her childhood and the Poland of her Jewish parents. She discusses issue of
great tragedy and great humour, often in the same vignette, and through her
featherlight touch the Holocaust is given a her own individual perspective as
one of the first babies born to not one but two Holocaust survivors.
This description makes the book sound sad
but it is in fact very funny; her wry observations identify the basic humour of
humanity and the particular humanity of the type of events that happen only in
New York.
She mentioned the book reading I went to in
her book, which I think means we are now best friends. Only in New York is a lovely book, four stars.
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