I don’t know how many of you have read Lily Brett’s books but I, for one, love this author. I met her several years ago when she was in Hobart for the book launch of Lola Bensky, I believe it was. Lily Brett was raised in Melbourne to Jewish parents that survived life in Auschwitz during World War II.  However her grandparents on both sides and many aunts and uncles did not survive. She has written quite a bit about being the child of Holocaust survivors over her writing career and the common traits that seem to follow these children.

When I think of having parents who survived the death camps of WWII, I often think you could never complain to them about anything.  Being bored during the school holidays or not being able to buy that latest dress just wouldn’t hold any weight at all. From what I have read there is also quite a bit of guilt children of surviving parents face due to constantly thinking about what happened to them.

Her parents raised her to believe there was no God. I guess if one witnessed what they did during the death camps of World War II, one would certainly be inclined to being atheistic.  Why would a merciful God allow this to happen?  But before anyone who has faith bombards me with an argument, this is not what this post is about.

Lily Brett moved to New York City more than 25 years ago with her second husband, an Australian painter, David Rankin and they have three children. She now considers herself as much a New Yorker as an Australian.  I just finished her book Only in New York.  It is a book filled with anecdotes divided into chapters of her experiences and thoughts about New York. It is a very funny book.

I have always loved books about New York City. However, for as much travelling as I have done in this word, touring 6 continents, I have yet to visit New York City. I know, I know.  When I was a preteen I read the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. I then went on to read everything Betty Smith ever wrote, though I forget all the titles now.

That book was the first book that put me in Brooklyn and allowed me to explore New York from that perspective.  I loved it. After that I would read anything I could about New York City.  I have a vision of what old New York City is like. The shops, the multi-cultural food, the quirkiness of the people, all the policemen named Patrick O’Mallory or something similar and the smells of the subway. I also love bookshop stories of New York.  I often think if I actually visited the city, all my images I carry in my head would be ruined. I’d probably see a lot of chain stores and foul weather. Or heat. Terrible, penetrating heat.  I often prefer my visions of what I think New York city is. I may still get there one day, but I have to admit, I am not in a hurry.

Lily lives in Manhattan in a lovely apartment filled with ‘stuff’. She talks about all of it. She talks of her daily walks, her husband who loves her and tolerates her eccentricities. Her father lives there. He is in his 90’s at the time this book was written and very much alive. She talks of her parents often and how she misses her mother. She talks about Jewish life and the traits of such, especially as it relates to life in New York City.

She writes about people who hold grudges, cafes, fashion she enjoys, New York psychics  and the various eccentric people she encounters.  There is a funny chapter about her lack of understanding of the animal world. I laughed out loud when she talked about camels and what their humps are for. I won’t spoil this with the actual paragraph, but I did reread it a couple of times so I could enjoy the laugh.

Lily Brett has a long list of memoirs and novels she has written. Mr. Penguin enjoyed two of her novels, Between Mexico and Poland as well as Too Many Men.  They linger on my shelves waiting for my turn to read them.  I remember loving her book Lola Bensky, the part fictional, part true experiences of being in her late teens following the music scene in England working as a junior journalist. She has met many rock stars of the time and her anecdotes of that time were both really interesting to someone of my generation and hilarious. I also enjoyed another book of her memoirs by chapters, You Gotta Have Balls.

Only in New York reminded me a great deal of the book Helene Hanff wrote of her daily life in New York City in Apple of my Eye.  That was a fun book to read but Lily’s is much funnier. She has a very wry sense of humour that sometimes drips with sarcasm as she describes daily life in such a large, populated city in the Jewish community.

If you haven’t tried her books I think you might consider her for 2019. If you have, I’d love to know what you thought of the books you read.

Here you will find the Wikipedia story of her life and books written. 

Lily Brett- Only in New York. Published in 2014

This tragic story happened in Hobart in 2005.  Elizabeth Ryan’s daughter, Genevieve was born in 1984. She died in 2005.

She came to Tasmania to attend the University of Tasmania.  She was a very bright, intelligent girl who had her entire life ahead of her and lived it enthusiastically. She loved words. She was a passionate writer. She loved nature.  She loved everything around her and she had an eye for observation that most people don’t seem to bother with.

One lovely Tasmanian day, Genevieve took a bushwalk on the Mt Wellington tracks.  People who don’t live here don’t always understand the life of Mt. Wellington. Indigenous people understood it for centuries. Mt Wellington has many stories. Many of them quite haunting tales of those who went missing and were never found again. Although the mountain is near the city, it has remote sections on it that need to be respected.

When Genevieve came upon a waterfall, she stood atop of it, marvelling at everything one marvels at when visiting a beautiful waterfall. She slipped and fell to her death.  When she failed to return to the share house she lived in she was reported missing.  Her friends, Nick and Ben found her body. Gen had mentioned she was going to walk to a waterfall several days earlier.

“She was lying peacefully on her back, naked, her arms above her head. She had been there for two nights. Nick (her friend), said that from up above, from where Gen had fallen, she looked like water- merging into the waterfall. A huge tiger snake, curled on the rock beside her, slithered away as Ben approached. ” (page 11)

Good Reads describes this book as:

Articulate, perceptive, sensitive, quirky, and often hauntingly beautiful, Genevieve Ryan’s writing explores the innermost experiences of a young woman growing up in an exhilarating and confusing world. Her journey through the twenty years of her short life is enriched by a passion for philosophy, literature, politics and art.

In this book, her mother, Elizabeth has drawn together a collection of Genevieve’s writings. The collection presents a delightful picture of a much-loved daughter. More importantly, it presents a message to a wider world – a message that growth and beauty are to be found in the deep, often painful search for inner meaning.

This is a book that will motivate everyone who feels called to write. People from fifteen to ninety-five will be inspired and charmed by the remarkable insights of an extraordinary young woman. Elizabeth Ryan grew up in Melbourne where she taught for many years before meeting Peter and having four daughters. With her family, she travelled and lived in Tumut in the Snowy Mountains, Townsville in North Queensland and Lismore in Northern New South Wales.

During these years she pursued a range of occupations. She has published in a number of educational journals and now works in Research Services at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne.

Daughter Genevieve was a wonderful writer. She wrote all the time. I do mean, all…the…time.  When working at the kiosk at the cricket once, she would write thoughts and little poems on brown paper bags when they weren’t busy.

She wrote in cafes all of the time. She mostly wrote journal entires, poetry and observations of people, places and events around her.

This book, written by her mother, Elizabeth shares Gen’s story of her life. She grew up on mainland Australia in several places. She wasn’t a Tasmanian.  She came here specifically to attend university.

Her writing is lovely. It’s intelligent and intuitive.  It’s one of those stories one reads about a person’s life that makes you wonder why the intelligent, beautiful people, who contribute to the world, have a life cut short and the mean, nasty people that only do harm live to be old.  In fact, her mother mentions this thought when she goes to the police station after Gen’s body has been found.  They need to identify her body. While there, a young man is dragged into the station, hate filling his eyes.  Gen’s mother wonders why there is such a difference between her daughter’s short life and this young man, who appears to not appreciate anything about life at that moment.  Who knows his story.

My thoughts-

I enjoyed meeting this young woman. Though I did get bogged down in the mother’s grief. Of course, anyone would. I focused on the writings of this talented young woman as that was what seemed important to me.  I didn’t know Gen but I know I would loved to have met her.  I enjoy hearing about talented young people who do wonderful things such as paint, write, succeed at sport.  This woman had her entire life ahead of her and it is to her mother’s credit to record her story and include so much of what she wrote.

I will include a sample below.

Cars Are My Soundtrack

I’ve been given life

And I choose to take it in the form of

Ink-water and touch

Writing, tears and human inter-action

My head is beating with the rhythm of necessity

My face is flushed, hot, burning

My heart is doing vigorous exercise

Am I ok? I have no idea

Cars are my soundtrack

Other people my plot.

Sometimes I think if the credits rolled at the end of my life- I might be a stunt double

Or a cameo

I feel like, in cutting the unnecessary fat away from my life, I’ve just chopped 

off a large portion of the actual meat, a large part of my essentials.

So I’m bleeding

I feel like I need a teacher

But can’t find anything that helps me, in books, music or people

I can’t open up to religion

I’m worried that I’ll be stagnant forever

(written 2002 in Melbourne before she entered Uni.)

I still have a couple of chapters at the end of this book to finish so I will stretch it out until the first of January so I could it on the list for 2019.  It will be the first Australian book, by an Australian woman writer for the year.