Lola Bensky

by Lily Brett

Lola Bensky ist ein hinreißend komischer und lebenskluger Roman über eine unkonventionelle Frau und die Last der Vergangenheit. Und eine fulminante Hommage an die großen, verrückten Heldinnen und Helden der Sixties.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Music, Australia, Historical Fiction, Journalism, Contemporary

303 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

WILL THE MOON STILL HANG IN THE SKY WHEN I DIE?


Grace Slick e Janis Joplin, le prime due grandi rocker. La Slick, definita la madre più bella della storia del rock (la figlia China nacque nel 1971), era l’inconfondibile e indimenticabile voce dei Jefferson, Airplane e Starship.

Il gioco di rimandi è intenso fin dalla copertina: l’autrice ha nome e cognome brevi e con le stesse iniziali del personaggio che intitola il romanzo, tanto che si tende a confonderle.
Il percorso esistenziale di Lola è molto simile a quello di Lily che scrive: entrambe figlie di ebrei sopravvissuti ad Auschwitz, entrambe nate in Germania in un campo profughi subito dopo la fine della guerra, entrambe trasferite in Australia in tenerissima età, entrambe giornaliste musicali durante gli anni della swinging London e del festival di Monterey, entrambe trasferite dall’Australia a New York insieme a un marito pittore, entrambe giornaliste prima e scrittrici poi (anche Lola scrive romanzi a un certo punto della sua vita e la sua protagonista, soprannominata con l’acronimo Pimp, si sposa più volte e combatte per tutta la vita con il suo essere ebrea, proprio come Lola e Lily).


Con Jimi Hendrix Lola parla di permanente, bigodini, capelli stirati e lager nazisti.

Lola incontra Jimi Hendrix, sensuale e selvaggio ma molto educato, a detta di Brian Jones è il migliore chitarrista del mondo, e insieme parlano di permanente bigodini capelli stirati e lager nazisti.
Va a intervistare a casa Mick Jagger, anche lui molto gentile ed educato, molto ordinato e borghese, per niente ribelle, e Mick le prepara il tè e le presenta Paul McCartney.
A Monterey si siede in platea accanto a Janis Joplin e diventano amiche, mentre sul palco suonano i Canned Heat, Otis Redding, l’aeroplano Jefferson con le magiche voci di Grace Slick e Marty Balin, loro parlano di infanzie difficili e macchine da cucire Singer nere coi fregi in giallo oro.
Jim Morrison invece si prende molto sul serio, è pieno di cose che gli danno fastidio, mette a disagio, e i Doors lasciano Lola fredda.
Pete Townshend è sgradevole e maleducato.
Brian Jones è sempre fatto o strafatto.


Mick Jagger, molto gentile ed educato, ordinato e borghese, per niente ribelle, le offre il tè e le presenta Paul McCartney.

Lola ha problemi di peso, è ossessionata dalle diete, ne programma e progetta di nuove ogni giorno, ma non le porta mai a termine.
Però, è bella anche grassa, piace, gli uomini rimangono colpiti da lei, anche se lei non è per nulla colpita da se stessa.
La colpisce più sua madre e quando la donna muore la figlia non smette di pensarla.
Dopo i quarant’anni comincerà a calare di peso ma non per effetto delle diete, e a sessantatre anni qualcuno le chiederà se è sempre stata magra.


Al Festival di Monterey Lola e Janis si conoscono perché sono sedute fianco a fianco, parlano di infanzie difficili e macchine da cucire Singer nere coi fregi in giallo oro.

Fino a venticinque anni è impavida, capace di fare tutto e andare dappertutto. Poi, inizia a sdraiarsi su un lettino psicanalitico, ad avere terapeuti dell’anima in più città, e a cinquantadue non fa che porre limiti a se stessa, paralizzata dagli attacchi di panico, chimica sotto forma di pillole per superarli, niente più metropolitana, al cinema e teatro solo seduta accanto al corridoio o le uscite, è diventata agorafobica e ipocondriaca.


Lola pensa che Jim Morrison si prenda troppo seriamente, è pieno di idiosincrasie, mette a disagio l’intervistatrice. E comunque, i Doors la lasciano fredda.

Lola è ebrea e parla yiddish, è molto ebrea ma non praticante, i suoi genitori dopo Auschwitz non riescono a credere in nessun dio e irridono i credenti, crescono la figlia lontano da sinagoga e shabbat.
Ma Lola sa riconoscere al volo gli ebrei, pensa molto all’essere ebreo, ci riflette in modo che fa davvero sorridere, al punto che Woody Allen sembra sprovveduto sull’argomento.
Sente di non avere diritto di vivere la sua vita se non rimette in scena il mondo caotico e psicotico dei campi di concentramento, trasformando l’umiliazione, la vergogna e il senso di colpa del padre e della madre nella vittoria contro gli oppressori nazisti, analogamente a quello che avviene nei suoi sogni ricorrenti in cui salva una persona dopo un incidente d’auto.
Durante le interviste e gli incontri con le rock star non riesce a trattenersi dal raccontare la storia dei suoi genitori, inclusi dettagli tremendi macabri, riesce però a farlo senza seminare orrore e depressione intorno.


Lola trova Pete Townshend sgradevole e maleducato.

Lily Brett racconta facendo sorridere e divertire, e crea un personaggio unico dotato di profonda comprensione dell’animo umano.

Will the moon still hang in the sky when I die?
Certo che sì, Marty, la luna rimarrà in cielo anche dopo che tu non ci sarai più, ci resterà qualunque cosa accada.


Lily Brett intervista Cliff Richard a Londra nel 1967.

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a brunette, fringed 19-year-old music fanatic, I presumed this book would tick all of my boxes. Sadly, I was quite wrong. I hate to write negative reviews (esp of Australian authors) but I have to be honest and say that I really don't like Brett's writing. Not one bit. This novel is about a young woman interviewing some of the world's biggest and best musicians at the height/beginning of their fame. Sounds great, but her voice comes across as clunky, detached and basic and I struggled to connect to Lola Bensky at all. As a young interviewer, I found her quite boring. Apparently, Lily Brett was a rock journalist around the era she writes, but she fails to show any real knowledge of the music industry beyond how the public have been known to perceive a certain musician. And, as a guitarist myself, I cringed at her cliched and flat descriptions of Jimi Hendrix and especially Lola's far from realist interviews with Jagger and Townsend. Her language is a little basic and jarred and she writes about music with no passion, feeling or flair. I really wanted to love it, but I was left really disappointed with this book :(

[Nicki · Rating 2 out of 5]

This started off well. Initially I quite enjoyed it. The interviews with the celebrities were interesting and I figured since Lily was herself a journalist, maybe they were based on real ones. Having read some of the other reviews for this, it seems that this is not the case and they are fictional. I am a little too young to know most of them, but had of course heard of the majority. I enjoyed what I thought was an insight into them.
The main problem I had was that we don't really get to know Lola very well. She seems to have no personality, interests or thoughts, apart from worrying about her weight. It's never explained how or why she becomes a music journalist. She does not seem to be a music fan or have any interest in it (or anything else). I can't imagine who would have employed her for that job. Much is made about how few jobs there were for women in music. Lola has nothing that makes her stand out, except her weight, and I can't imagine that being a plus in such sexist times.
The book steers off halfway through to where Lola is married to an ex rock star and has children. The husband is not faithful to Lola, dating back before the wedding. I could not understand why she would want to marry him. We never learn the husband or the kids names, or the name of her next partner. They seem irrelevant and so does Lola. She has no backbone and life just seems to happen to her. I can't figure out if she's poorly written, or just the most boring character ever written.
Lola is the daughter of parents who survived a concentration camp. It is horrible, and I understand (or at least can empathise) the horror of that in your background, all other family members dead and your mother highly critical of you. There is a lot in here about that, and how it has shaped Lola. I pitied her, and her parents, but it felt to me like a totally different story than the one about a 60's rock journalist. Not necessarily one that was overly hinted at on the sleeve of the book, or that I would like to read. I have gathered from reading reviews here that most of Lily Brett's books cover this, as this is in her own past.
It's a very sad and horrible thing that happened, but I have to say this will be my first and last Lily Brett. It's not a subject I want to keep revisiting. I'm glad it's represented in books and hope it never happens again, but I sure don't wish to read the same character and situation over and over.
I probably would have liked this more if Lola wasn't so blah.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only gave this book 2 stars because its written about an era and a community of musicians that I adore. The writing itself is fairly good but the character of Lola Bensky is dull, indecisive, annoying,self-loathing, green, unintelligent, unconfident, unconvincing, ignorant and woeful.
I feel that Lily Brett has tried to re-imagine something along the lines of Kerouac's On The Road, from a meek Australian female perspective, and failed miserably.
Throw in some graphic depictions of world war two attrocities, constant complaints and sympathy seeking from Lola about being fat, being a child of an Auschwitz survivor and not being good enough for anything and you have 267 pages of drivel.
Brett's ability to develop strong female characters is non-existant and to see a character like this making it into popular culture is both disturbing and counter-productive.
As a fan of this genre and era of music I was ecstatic that an Australian rock journalist character had been created who would venture into the murky depths of 60s and 70s rock, especially since, with the exception of Janis Joplin, Lillian Roxon and Linda Eastman; it really was a mans world. Reading Lola Bensky was like having the testosterone of every one of those arrogant rock men rammed down my throat and then suffering severe indigestion later on.
The depiction of some of rocks greatest ever talents like Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Sonny Bono and Mama Cass was not only offensive to read, but is offensive to the memory of every single one of them. The only people given a favourable part in Lola's story were Mick Jagger, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and eventually Cher.
Brett gave Lola an obsession with death and the book concludes with a reeling off of the list of dead rock stars along with quotes from their autopsy reports.
This book is about jewishness, is a platform for obsessing over death, poor body image and cold parental relationships; it is chick lit, drama and every annoying thing you could possibly think of all bound together in a piece of very Warhol-ish cover art.
Don't let your daughters read this book, and don't read it if your a fan of 60s and 70s rock, just don't read it. Its just too derogatory and ill-informed. Lily Brett should be ashamed of herself for having let the world see this paginated piece of literary garbage.

[Komala · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm disappointed to say that I have nothing good to say about this book. Why would anyone want to read a book about a woman who, rather than talk about her incredibly interesting career; or her travels; or the amazing people that she has interviewed and hung out with, chooses instead to write about how fat her thighs are? Lola doesn't seem to have any passion for music, or anything really. It's almost as if she just stumbled into the music industry. Her mother is so hateful that I didn't even have any sympathy for her being an Auschwitz survivor (now that takes some talent!). The writing style is stilted, the main character is a twit, the plot is...missing.

[Amanda Apthorpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

While it took me a little while to adapt to Lily Brett's writing style, ultimately I was fully engaged with the character of Lola Bensky. A little more than 'based' on her own experience as a rock journalist in the 1960s, Brett imbues Lola with wonderful warmth, humour and her self-effacing attitude is very endearing. Of course, the entree into the personal world of the 60s Rock Greats adds to the interest of this novel, but more than that, it is Lola's inner turmoil as she tries to come to grips with being the daughter of Holocaust survivors that is written with most effect. In an interview Brett was asked if she was ever in awe of the Legends she interviewed. She replied, "When your parents were in the Concentration camps of Auschwitz it's hard to be in awe of a Rock Star" (paraphrase). This book will have wide appeal, to those who just like a good story, to those who remember or are fascinated by the hype of the Rock Gods of the 60s, to those who appreciate the psychological and physical displacement for survivors of atrocities and for their children, and for those who can appreciate the humour embedded in this novel. To my shame I have not read any of Brett's previous works, but I will definitely rectify that now.

[Sharanya Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was apprehensive with the 3.3 average rating but I couldn't put this book down. I read it from cover to cover in one evening. I found the writing was simple, light, easy to get through but the content was surprisingly profound and at times almost disturbing. I found it to have a great balance of depth and simplicity. The non-linear timeline, the idiosyncratic main character, and the basis in Lily Brett's own life make this a great read, in my opinion. Sometimes Lola Bensky's weight obsession became dull to read about but it was self-aware and obviously purposeful.

[Melinda Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't say I enjoyed this very much. A made up journo having made up conversations with famous rock stars hold tick all the boxes, but all Lola does is obsess over false eyelashes, WWII atrocities and diets. The middle of the book inexplicably zoomed far into the future for no discernible reason, then again bafflingly back to the 60's for some of the conclusion. Reading this book in Lola's narrative is like a monotonous, muffled ongoing noise that you can't quite figure out.

[Clarabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

D'un côté, j'ai adoré l'ambiance rocknroll du roman, la folie des années 60, la nouvelle scène, les excès, le glamour, la liberté. C'est carrément exaltant. Par contre, Lola Bensky n'est pas une rigolote : complexée et triste comme un bonnet de nuit, on la sent davantage simple spectatrice et engluée dans ses problèmes.
Au final, j'ai un peu mis de côté la part confidentielle de Lola Bensky pour me consacrer à son travail et aux légendes incarnées. Pour ça, rien que pour ça, j'ai beaucoup aimé ce roman. Sensation grisante d'avoir voyagé dans le temps et d'avoir touché les étoiles.
http://blogclarabel.canalblog.com/arc...

[Steve lovell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whatever became of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich?
They had been long gone from my grey matter until Lily Brett’s book bought back a memory of forty plus years ago. For a nano-second, despite their ridiculous appellation based on the member’s nicknames, they were the hottest band on the planet with monster hits such as ‘The Legend of Xanadu’ and ‘Bend It’ – the latter being banned in the Bible Belt for its saucy lyrics. In my formative years of musical appreciation I’d purchased these two singles on 45rpm – that’s how far back in the mists of time all this was – and for a while they had high rotation on whatever primitive music machine I was using at the time!
To quench my Brett induced curiosity I went to Wikipedia and found their moment in the sun was indeed brief. They reformed several times to work the nostalgia circuit, and I discovered that their lead man had recently passed away. Before he achieved fame Dave Dee was a policeman, and (trivia alert) had attended the car accident that took the life of 50’s rocker Eddie Cochran, and almost that of his good mate Gene Vincent. Dee had found Eddie’s guitar and looked after it till the family claimed it – so he was obviously well suited to his post fame career in law.
Needless to say, the 60s was a great time to enjoy one’s teenagerhood living through a revolution in popular music, and it all came thundering back reading ‘Lola Bensky’. Brett’s heroine’s adventures in popdom carries the ‘novel’, although it is about so much more. The titular protagonist’s time in Swinging London, LA and Monterrey, as a rock journalist was, for this reader, the offering’s highlight, bookending the middle chapters that outlined Lola’s later life as novelist and wife. The author herself worked the same beat for iconic Aussie mag ‘Go Set’, my musical bible way back when. Lily presumably met the same pop legends as Lola (both LBs – get it), so one would think there’s a fair amount of ‘faction’ here. It would be lovely to think these luminaries were much as they were painted in this work for, apart from Jim Morrison, they leave a largely favourable impression. Sadly most of them, after burning so brightly, were snuffed out by the usual suspects besetting the creative. What would Brian, Otis, Mama, Jimi, Janis, even the Lizard King himself, gone on to achieve – or not? Brett’s roll call at the end, although a well trodden path, still remains powerfully poignant. Above it all loomed Sir Mick, and his ultimately knowing glance across the table to Lola in the final paragraphs says it all.
‘Lola Bensky’ is much more that a paen to those golden times. In this mix is Lola/Lily’s jewishness and the pall of the death camps. There is much on body issues – and here I discovered Mama Cass’ terminal ham sandwich is myth – and we even have a novel within a novel. There is parental homage and a quandary involving false eyelashes and Cher. Brett’s writing of it all is as masterful, as we have come to expect, with the tone it creates. With music at the centre of my being though, I was disappointed when she moved away from this aspect after the opening chapters, and delighted when she returned to the ‘summer of love’ in ending.
I was saddened to miss Lily’s book launch in Hobart, but gratified that she graciously signed my copy of ‘Lola’ in my absence. It was reported to me as a magic event, with Lily’s warmth and care for her readers palpable throughout. In the same way we feel her love for the characters peopling her novel, real and imagined. For a few short months over one northern summer it did feel we were onto something special. Then came Altamont, the moment was lost and it all faded away. The spirit of those times has never been recaptured. Pity that.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first encounter with Lily Brett was in 1986 when my mum, who had never censored my reading in any way, gently took The Auschwitz Poems from my hands and said, “Enough.” I’d been on a long Holocaust reading binge and Brett’s collection of poems had me in tatters.

Lola Bensky is a different Brett. It’s the story of nineteen-year-old Lola, an Australian rock journalist who is sent to London in 1967 to interview Hendrix, Jagger and Joplin, to name a few. It sounds fanciful, but Lola Bensky is rooted in Brett’s own experience and although it may be difficult to sort fact from fiction in this novel, a glance through Brett’s bio suggests that Lola is almost a memoir. Almost.

Without sounding completely condescending *but nonetheless, does*, I think the majority of readers on Goodreads didn’t ‘get’ Lola, criticising her for being more concerned about the size of her thighs than interviewing Jagger/ Hendrix/ Joplin. Those readers have missed the point. Although musical greatness was before her, the fat squeezing through the holes in her fishnet tights and her ironed hair starting to frizz was forefront in her mind because Lola was young. Very young, as her unintentionally laconic observations reveal –

“Mick Jagger sat opposite her on the other side of the coffee table in a black leather armchair. He was curled up in a curiously passive position. He looked very comfortable. He didn’t look like the anti-establishment destroyer of social values that he and the other Rolling Stones had been labelled.”

But more significantly, Lola’s preoccupation and shame over her weight is tied to the fact that her parents, Renia and Edek, starved in a German concentration camp during WWII. Lola’s survivor’s guilt is ever-present – in her eating, her interviews and her relationships.

“Lola liked accumulating information about people. She found it oddly soothing. She had her own lists, too. Lists of her mother and father’s dead relatives… Lola preferred to list the various diets she was thinking about.
Lola didn’t have time to feel sad. She was too busy being cheerful or planning her interviews or thinking about food. Decades later, Lola Bensky would not be quite as immune to the lists of the dead.”

There’s enough detail about the music industry to satisfy those readers looking for a rock’n’roll story but Lola Bensky is so much more. It’s a story about finding your place in the world, control, and belonging. Brett doesn’t overplay the coming-of-age element – instead, we witness Lola calibrate her experience of the superficial and carefree music scene in London, against the lives of her parents, who despite making a new home in Melbourne, would always bear scars.

“They shared a bond, the children of the victims and the children of the perpetrators. They had so much in common. They grew up with a past that was omnipresent. And incomprehensible. So much of that past didn’t make sense. Much of it was hidden, half-told, hinted at.”

4/5 Brett’s staccato style, Lola’s glib humour and the deeper messages in this book are a stunning combination.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lola Bensky is probably one of the more surprising novels I’ve read in a long time. Lily Brett, who is quite famous in her native Australia, has certainly won a new fan in this here blogger. What at first glance would seem to be simple little tale about a girl interviewing all the famous rockstars of the 1960s and 1970s, turned out to be an unexpectedly poignant exploration of a generation from a completely unique point of view.
See my full review here: http://www.thewhynottblog.com/book-re...

[Nicola · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't work out how Lola managed to apparently do such a great job as a journalist/writer/wife etc when she seemed to know nothing about anything and obsess about everything! I came away not being able to decide whether I had enjoyed it or not.

[Lizp · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great read. I liked the Lola Bensky character with all her insecurities and her self effacing way. She has humour and warmth. As with Brett’s other books, the Holocaust and its survivors feature. The book focuses on Lola’s job as a music journalist when she was just 19, with her interviewing many music “Gods”. There’s a funny scene where she’s worriedly watching Janis Joplin sculling down whiskey. She asks Janis if that is good for her. Janis answers “hell yes”, and offers her some. In another scene, she’s watching Mana Cass sing and observes that her voice was strong and unencumbered. There was no hint that this voice might have had to struggle through a lot of fat. Then elsewhere there’s an implication that Jimi Hendrix tried to crack on to Lola.

This book has much humour and is very well written. Despite its lightheartedness, it also focuses on the adverse psychological effects on the survivors of atrocities and the survivors’ children.

[J.Sieroux · Rating 1 out of 5]

ich fühl mich damit irgendwie schlecht, aber ich fand die geschichte die im buch erzählt wird, langweilig. einige themen (ausschwitz, verhalten der mutter, jegliche beziehungsgeflechte) waren super interessant und fesselnd. aber nach zwei seiten ging es weiter mit (für mich) belanglosen interviews.
und dafür dass in dem buch ihre ganze lebensgeschichte skizziert wird, weiß ich nicht sonderlich viel über sie außer ihr gewicht und ihr körperbild dazu (ist für mich auch einfach ein thema mit dem ich mich nicht beschäftigen will, wenn ich ein buch lese)

[Manu Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pas vraiment ce à quoi je m'attendais. Plutôt que des anecdotes sur la vie d'une journaliste de rock passionnée, on a droit à la biographie romancée de l'auteur, qui semble se retrouver par hasard à interviewer Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrickx, Pete Townsend et cie, d'un air las et ennuyé. Elle parle essentiellement de ses kilos en trop et de ses régimes, ce qui m'a fortement agacés. Ainsi que de son enfance entre deux parents rescapés d'Auschwitz. Malgré des passages intéressants, je ressors déçue.

[Jillwilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Lilly Brett was quite young, she got a job with Go-Set, which was the first Australian rock/pop newspaper. Go-Set came out of a group who worked at Monash Uni on Lot’s Wife. While Lily had no formal training as a journalist she was given quite a lot of opportunities, including going to Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, just as her fictional character, Lola Bensky does. At the time, she says that an experienced journo gave her some advice: “Always start with a good line.”

This novel opens with “Lola Bensky was sitting on an uncomfortably high stool. She could feel the nylon threads of her fishnet stockings digging into her thighs.”. I loved this opening scene – anyone who has worn uncomfortable stockings, will identify with Lola, squirming on her stool as she tries to ascertain where the tissue that acted as a buffer between her legs and the stockings has gone, and as she tries to look cool while talking with Jimi Hendrix. The passages about music are great – so interesting – she had uninterrupted access to Mick Jagger, Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Mama Cass amongst others.
Brett intertwines this story with that of her upbringing. Her parents are survivors of the Holocaust. Edek, the redoubtable father re-occurs in this narrative but it’s the figure of her mother that is more pervasive. Her mother, understandably, is presented as being hugely damaged and this has a significant impact on Bensky’s life. You will notice that I write Bensky – whilst the novel follows some of the key events of Brett’s life, it is a novel – it’s easy to conflate the two.
Of this period of her life, Brett says “having two parents imprisoned in Nazi ghettos and then Nazi death camps really makes idolizing rock stars seem almost absurd. So Lola came from a very, very different place than if you’d grown up with sunshine and Sao biscuits and a feeling that the world was just perfect. She really, really wanted to know who these people were.” (http://wheelercentre.com/dailies/post...)

I really liked reading the depictions of her encounters with these rock stars – encounters that are pretty amazing given that Brett/Bensky is only 19 or 20 years old. What is described is fresh and interesting. I kept wanting to know “Did this really happen? Did they really say that?” It reads like it is real, like Brett drew on her old Go-Set columns and diaries to write these scenes. I wanted it to be real – I would have preferred a memoir rather than the ambiguous half-land that I think this narrative is. In a memoir, I would have been less impatient with Bensky’s constant refrain about being fat. The repetition of this drove me mad; a novel demands slightly more finesse in terms of getting a point across.

Easily the most poignant scene of the novel was the description of the family eating; Edek and Lola eating with each other, the mother eating scraps with her back turned to the rest of the family. The long reach of the Holocaust stretching out to suburban Australia with its impact on generations after. Brett said in an interview: ''I once said to my mother, 'When I close my eyes I can hear crying', and she said, 'That's because when you were born everyone was crying, either out of joy at your birth or terrible anguish at loved ones who had died'.'' Max and Rose were happy to be alive and in Australia - ''Dad would come home in-between shifts at the factory he worked at, and say, 'This country is paradise''' - but their experiences infused them with a suspicion of happiness that Brett inherited.

''Excess happiness expressed loudly is the most bothering aspect to me,'' she says. ''You don't want to push your luck. I always feel bothered by people who, when asked how they are, say 'Excellent!' The man I live with, David, has a terrible tendency to say how wonderful everything is. I just grit my teeth. And if we are alone I say, 'Don't, just don't'.''
When she was young, in Melbourne, Brett used to envy the ''carefreeness'' of the English-speaking children she met at school. Now she is not so sure. ''The idea that a person's skin colour or sexuality or even the music they listen to makes them somehow less human than you, that's a dangerous idea that I've always tried to warn people about in my work,'' she says. ''So, in that way, my parents' history has compelled me to write. ''In an important way, it liberated me.'' (www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/th...)

In commenting on the book, Brett compared the access she had to famous people to what is available now. “Today nobody gets a personal picture out of anyone who’s a celebrity in any way, you have to be a celebrity for ten minutes and you’ve got your own management company, public relations company, bodyguards. As an interviewer, you get 15 minutes with 20 other journalists and a very small window of what you can say and what they can’t say.”

And my favourite line from the book comes apropos of a discussion about Jewish humour: “If they had to put his brain in a chicken, it would run straight to the butcher.”

[Cassie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a quick, light and easy read but I do have some qualms.

Admittedly, what first attracted me to this book was the cover (we all judge a book by its cover every now and then). It shows a twenty-something girl with thick, long eyelashes and has that “retro” 50s, 60s look. I love fashion and style from that time and I had to pick this book up because of that. Then I read the description. It had lots of familiar names: Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass, Monterey Pop Festival. As a music lover, especially music from the 60s, namely 1967, the “Summer of Love,” there was no question—I had to read this book now. Lola Bensky, a rock music journalist from Australia, is the main character and struggles with her Jewish heritage and her weight. All of this sounded like a very interesting mixture.

What I noticed right from the start was Brett’s voice: Very sharp, blunt and short sentences, almost in a juvenile way. She has many witty one-liners, but, unfortunately, that is all the praise I have for this book. The hard, short sentences do not flow nicely and oftentimes run into sudden pauses that completely cut short the thought process the reader might be having. At times I felt my mind wandering and had to reread a sentence or two. The way in which Brett writes became very dull and difficult to follow because it did not flow nicely. I thought this was her debut novel, an author still struggling to find her voice. When I found out it was not her debut, then I resigned to the fact that this is just how she writes. And that’s okay.

As far as the actual story, I found it quite boring. When she describes all these rock stars, she is very cliché. For someone like myself who is mildly knowledgeable about the musicians of the time, it was hard to read all the stereotypical over-documented accounts of Hendrix’s clothes, or Janice Joplin’s raspy voice, even Mama Cass’s weight! For someone less knowledgeable I can see how this would be okay and would give a nice overview of these people. For me, it made the story dull.

Lola herself is not a very loveable person. In fact, she is annoying at times. I struggle when the main character is not lovable because I want to relate and be a part of their life for the duration of their story. The heart of the theme of this book wildly surrounds her weight, her “fatness.” She even compares her weight to Mama Cass, saying that Mama Cass is fatter than she is. I realize her point, and again, some people may relate more than I do, but I don’t think this theme was hashed out correctly. It made me feel quite bothered, actually. I cringed when I saw the word “fat” used so many times on one page! We learn a lot about Lola’s past, especially her parents and how they survived Auschwitz. Between the weird accounts of her father and her painstaking relationship with her mother, I can see how she would feel less than beautiful about her weight, but I am not sure the actual point Brett is trying to make.

I would venture to say that Jimi Hendrix was one of the main characters, as he pops up quite a few times—in random spots in the story, too. I think he is a hero in Lola’s eyes. At one point, Lola has a vision of him in a car accident, and then all of a sudden it’s over and seemingly has nothing to do with the plot moving forward. I’m not too fond of these quick and pointless reveries. Perhaps I missed the purpose, but otherwise it doesn’t fit in well. I wonder why Lily Brett would use him as a sort of protagonist. Perhaps she is a huge fan? In any case, I thought that was interesting.

Maybe I missed the mark on this novel but I really couldn’t take home anything of value. Nothing really happened. Overall, it was a nice read (whenever something is nice, we can usually agree that we can take it or leave it) and read it on the train to and from work. A good "pass the time" book. I gave it 2 stars because while it's not the best story in the world, this was the first actual printed book I picked up in awhile (avid Kindle reader here!) and it felt good to touch and smell a book. The content and story was okay and even though I went on and on about how it doesn't flow nicely, it's not bad writing, just not what I prefer. Would I recommend this book? Probably not.

[Calzean · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I read this book I went through periods where it had me, then it dragged for a while, then it got me again and finally it petered out.

Interesting storyline of a young Australian journalist interviewing the famous rock stars of the 70s just as their careers were taking off. In all her interviews, Lola Bensky seemed to be taking more of her weight problems and her parents experiences at Auschwitz than getting material for her magazine.

Lola has self doubts, she is fat, she grapples with understanding the trauma her parents were suffering, she feels unloved and although successful at work is lonely. Later she finds more success as an author and then in her second marriage she finds happiness. By this stage she is also thin.

The fat/thin storyline became boring, the introduction of her characters from her books, complete with dialogue made me wonder which book was I reading and some of her interviews with celebs boarded on narcissism.

Lily Brett has written about her parents before and in this book the parents of Lola Bensky appear as autobiographical characters. Writing about her parents, their torment and grief were the strongest part of this book.

[Rhianna · Rating 1 out of 5]

What an absolute disappointment of a book I was so looking forward to reading! I felt there was no real point to the book, nothing exciting or dramatic happened to Lola that encouraged me to read on. The character of Lola was one which I could not connect with, possibly due to the fact that I am neither Jewish nor overweight. Frequently the book bored me as I was met with repetition that seemed to drag on. The endless list of celebrities Lola interviews each come with their own description into their life that Lily Brett seems to have quickly Googled before writing. And had I known the subject matter of the book would have been so heavily engrossed in Lola's status as the child of a death-camp survivor, I probably would not have read it in the first place. Very unimpressed overall. The only star given because of the inclusion of my love Jimi Hendrix in the first page that made me read further.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much calling on the same character types, issues and preoccupations that threaded through previous novels. I am beginning to feel that most of Brett's books are just another perspective on her own life story. The 'new' bits do not really add anything profound to the narrative. The reference to the detective agency almost seemed to be lifted from Alexander McCall's stories...oddly enough that was the most entertaining part of the book.

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy Lily Brett's books! They are funny!They are introspective in a highly self deprecating way. You have to read 'You Gotta Have Balls' and this book to really see Lily Brett. Her feelings of insignificance makes her write significant heros. Her Dad characters are side splitting and so very vivid. When I'm in New York I want to bump into her and just wink at her with my diamanté fake eyelashes.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just loved this book. The cover caught my attention and I was drawn in by the fact that Lola was a rock magazine journalist in 1967 and met all the great musicians of that time. I believe this book is semi-autobiographical which is even more fascinating. I highly recommend this book, just wonderful!

[Georgette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ridiculously cute and easy to read.

[Dani Wood · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was written quite poorly and I couldn’t get into it. Somehow for a third person narrative it was self-centred.

[Lara Cain Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s 1967. London is swinging and California is dreaming as some of history’s most formidable music artists take to the world stage. Overweight high-school drop-out Lola Bensky has every 19 year old’s dream job as a journalist for Rock-Out magazine. She leaves her anxious Jewish immigrant parents in Melbourne and heads overseas to chat with the likes of Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison and Cher. As she quizzes them about their lives, she develops a deeper understanding of her own unique upbringing as the child of holocaust survivors.

The Lola we meet in the ‘60s is a jumble of wide-eyed naivety and world-weary nonchalance – a typically complicated young adult. She is largely unintimidated by the celebrities she meets, yet extremely self-conscious about her weight; she’s shocked by the drug taking and free love culture of the music industry, and yet is numb to the stories she hears over and over of horrific violence experienced by her relatives in 1940s Poland. Lola is the world of the baby boomer generation personified: defined at once by flower power and the legacies of a heinous world war. Lola Bensky follows this curious protagonist as she moves through marriage, motherhood and maturity towards a new career as a writer of detective fiction. Although there are many themes at work, the overall journey is about self-discovery and self-actualisation; about who we are (or choose to be?) when we are not defined by our parents, our careers or our appearance.

Lola Bensky is a work of fiction but it draws heavily on Lily Brett’s own life which includes immigrating to Melbourne in 1948 and writing for Go-Set – Australia’s first music magazine – before going on to be an acclaimed essayist and novelist. It is hard to know where fact ends and poetic licence begins in Lola’s celebrity encounters, but as a reader I long for some of it to be true. I really hope there were 19 year old Australian journalists in London discussing hair curlers with Jimi Hendrix and helping Barry Gibb pick out suits on Carnaby Street, as Lola does. I hope they were able to go to New York and watch Linda Eastman (later McCartney) get dumped by Jim Morrison and prop up a passed-out Brian Jones at the Monterey Pop Festival. Those are some pretty cool anecdotes right there.

Beyond the insightful descriptions of these colourful characters though, many of Lola’s interviews soon turn to the topic of her own life, particularly the heavy influence of her parents. I read these interactions as dream-like sequences, or as stories told with the tainted perspective of biased memory; stories infused by the teenage assuredness of one’s position at the centre of the universe. These are the kind of stories one would tell when describing a dream to a therapist (“So, I’m interviewing Mick Jagger when suddenly I realise we’re talking about the holocaust…”). As the novel develops, Lola begins to realise that her penchant for asking questions, as reflected in journalism and detective novels, has a lot to do with her questions about herself. When she asks Jimi Hendrix “Were you a happy child?”, for example, she opens the door for discussion of her own parents who were “…on another planet” – a state of being as destructive, it seems, as the turbulent, fractured family in which Hendrix grew up.

This ‘other planet’ is the second world war and the horrendous crimes experienced and witnessed by Jews living in prison camps under the Nazi regime. The graphic stories from this period brought to mind the phrase ‘a fate worse than death’, which gets used too flippantly a lot of the time. The torture, humiliation, experimentation and starvation experienced by these people go beyond most adjectives to describe bad experiences – I really have no words. The added significance for Lola, and others of her generation, is that these events have made it difficult for survivors to be dedicated parents. “The space that most parents had available for their children’s current lives was taken up by the past. Lola could see it in her mother. Her mother couldn’t hear her.” Lola looks around at her wedding and notes how many people in her parents’ community are survivors of death camps and labour camps. “Their children were survivors of their parents”.

One of the most interesting facets of this survival journey circles around Lola’s weight. Lola has been raised by a mother who is obsessed by thinness. She is relentless in her harassment and put-downs, regularly telling Lola that no man will ever want a fat girl and policing her food. As a survivor of genuine starvation it might seem illogical that a mother would want to stop her daughter from eating, but to Lola’s mother, Renia, weight gain is a sign of malevolence. In a prison camp, the only people who are not underweight are the enemy – the traitors who sneak food, or the officers who indulge while their prisoners suffer. This dark perspective on body image is neatly juxtaposed against the people Lola encounters professionally, like Twiggy, Cher and Mama Cass, who are used by the media to publicly define the fashionable and desirable female body.

Celebrity indulgences, like aspiring to thinness, wasteful spending and self-destructive behaviour, are ludicrous in the light of the horrors of war. A critic calling Mick Jagger’s gyrating dance moves ‘depraved’ clearly has little understanding of truly immoral activities. Jim Morrison stands out for me as the best example of a self-centred wanker (sorry, can’t think of a more eloquent way to describe him) although it’s clear that he, too, is a product of his upbringing and the industry he aspires to conquer. It is hard to comprehend his freedom to prattle on in a dozy haze about his spirituality (having absorbed the soul of a Native American whose death he witnessed, apparently) when others were subjected to torture because of their beliefs. Lola spends her life flailing about in the shadow of death, while rock legends’ lives end prematurely, often thanks to their own excessive lifestyles.

Lola Bensky is clever, funny and moving. The slippery narrative had me lurching from envy to repulsion and back again, taking the journey between the past and the present with Lola as a likeable, straight-talking tour guide. As the quirky Lola chats to her subjects, wrenching down her mini skirt and fussing with false lashes, she inadvertently questions the ways in which we view history, the people we hold up as heroes and the nature of being a child and a parent.

This review can also be read at my blog http://thischarmingmum.com

[josephine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich habe das Buch als sehr unterhaltsam und stellenweise trotzdem sehr spannend empfunden. Obwohl Interviews, die die Protagonisten Lola, eine Rockjournalisten in den 60er Jahren, mit Legenden der Musikgeschichte führt das gesamte Buch immerwider durchbrechen habe ich dieses Thema eher als kleineres Detail empfunden. Nach Abschluss dieses Buches habe ich das Gefühl eine Frau näher kennengelernt zu haben, die ihr ganzes Leben lang um die Zuneigung ihrer Mutter kämpft, welche sich immer weiter mit ihren Problemen mit ihrem Gewicht verstricken. Während man kritisieren könnte das die Interviews und der Blick auf die Musikwelt nicht tiefgreifend genug erzählt werden, finde ich es gerade spannend wie wenig Platz diese aufregende Szene von der Lola ein Teil zu sein scheint, in ihrem Kopf im Vergleich zu ihrem selbstoptimierenden Drang Abzunehmen, einnimmt. Auf mich wirkte das Buch wie ein spannender Kommentar auf die Allgegenwärtigkeit von Schönheitsidealen und wie sie unser Leben und unsere Gedanken prägen.
Allerdings, hätte ich mir manche Abschnitte noch etwas ausführlicher gewünscht, damit der Roman für mich noch etwas runder gewirkt hätte.

[Sally Edsall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Lily Brett. An Australian lobg-term resident of New York, she's a former rock journalist (Go Set mag in the 1960s), essayist, novelist.

All her novels eg You Gotta Have Balls, Too Many Men & the last one, Lola Bensky, are based in autobiography.

She continues to draw from her life as the child of death camp (Auschwitz) Holocaust survivor parents, and what that has meant for their lives as well as her own.

She's also bloody funny - mainly about her as described by her stereotypically Jewish anxieties and phobias.

She has also drawn on her notes from 1960s interviews with the greats of the time- Jimi Hendrix, Sonny & Cher, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Mama Cass and Michelle Phillips, Sam and Dave, Pete Townshend, and above all Mick Jagger. Also friendships with Linda Eastman and Lillian Roxon ("that other fat, Australian Jewish journalist")

The ending is poignant, and tragic in an entirely unintended way.

It also shows how far Lola / Lily has come over 5 decades.

[Vivienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as part of BCBE 12.5 in the category of book title starting with L. (Kindle)
This is a weird book, chosen because I like the writing of Lily Brett not because the content appealed . . . in fact, it is 'about' such a mixture of things: well known rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger and Mama Cass, an obsession with being over weight, being an author, being Jewish, and most of all, Holocaust survival. All these things based to some degree of Brett's life experiences.
The fact that I'm not particularly interested in the lives of rock musicians and that I'm unsure how much of Lola's information about them is factual, is really irrelevant because I love Brett's ability to bring all her characters to life through small pieces of information.
I particularly like Lola, the way her character changes and develops . . . yet stays the same . . . her relationship with her parents, her honesty and insightfulness about both herself and other people and her constant reflections on why people are like they are. ****

[trombosenjose · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5/5
war immer wieder sehr gelangweilt 🥱
es gab gute passagen die dann allerdings von unnötigem zeug abgelöst wurden, mich hat der plot von dem buch was sie geschrieben hat nicht gejuckt und dafür 30+ seiten zu verwenden ist eine verschwendung meiner zeit!
wieso der zeitlich ablauf für zwei kapitel geändert wurde habe ich nicht ganz verstanden, das buch wäre ohne gleich geblieben wenn nicht sogar besser.
einige kapitel waren ganz gut, die mit mick jagger und janis joplin, aber sonst haben sich die ständigen interviews ein bisschen repetetiv angefühlt.
ein interessanter aspekt ist lolas leben als kind von menschen die das kazet auschwitz überlebt haben, man hat definitiv neue aspekte über die lebenssituation der personen dort gelernt, aber ich finde das wie darüber berichtet wurde nicht gut umgesetzt wurde. die autorin hätte sich mehr darauf fokusieren sollen wie lola mit den erlebnissen ihrer eltern umgeht, was aber dann doch immer nur vage angedeutet wurde.
eigentlich eine interessante idee für ein buch aber nicht so gut umgesetzt