Kathleen Rooney (1)Critiques

This is a remarkable, well-written, unusual story about one day in the life of a quirky eighty-four-year-old (or maybe eight-five, if she were being honest) New Yorker. But, I should note, I tend to gravitate to a unique story or the way one uniquely tells a tale; Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk fills both these requirements for me.

I was more than surprised to learn that author Kathleen Rooney was neither old by any stretch, thirty-something young, nor she did write this novel based on her own grandmother's or any other elderly female's perspective within Ms. Rooney's life; she just made it up. Brava!

It's New Year's Eve, and Ms. Boxfish takes a walk, in the literal sense of the word. That's it. But she narrates as she travels through New York City, and we learn snippets of her life; where she worked, who she loved, her child, her ups, and her most significant downs. As the once most highly paid advertising female, Ms. Boxfish is quick, witty, well-mannered, and biting; my kind of gal. During her walk, she also tells of the people she encounters along the way, a security guard, a store clerk, a chauffeur, three would-be muggers, and each adds to her story as she seemingly adds to theirs. It's simply delightful.

If you are looking for an adventurous book, an earth-shattering ending, or ah-ha revelation, you will not find it here - what you will find is a proficient, unique, and charming story. After reading this, I aspire to be like Lillian Boxfish in thirty years.

This book is narrated by a pigeon, so I knew it would be good. A very unique historical fiction about the real life famous WWI homing pigeon that I had never heard about.

More of a 3.5?

Very mixed feelings here. I loved the concept and found the writing quite nice but I couldn't warm up at all to the character Lillian. When I made an effort to think of her as Mary Berry from the Great British Baking Show the book worked better for me but that took considerable effort and more often than not I found myself feeling irritated by her attitude. She seemed tremendously full of herself and unlike the people she stumbles upon on New Year's Eve walk I didn't find her at all charming or likable.

Reading the notes at the end and realizing that Lillian is based on a real woman was interesting to me. I did not appreciate the poetry or the ads that were sprinkled throughout the book but they bothered me less knowing they were the actual work of Margaret Fishback - the "real" Lillian.

I live in Chicago and visited Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle as a child and also took my children to see it. I was unaware of Moore’s stardom and her success as an investment advisor. Often when I read historical fiction that explores a historical figures life, I think that I would be better off reading a biography. Although I felt this away about this book, I feel like the fictionalization of her life made it a little more interesting.

My only disconnect with the book is that Doreen (Colleen’s fictional name) is telling her story through an interview with the museum narrating the details of the fairy castle. However in this interview she talks much more about her life than the fairy castle. Minor point but it didn’t hold true to me.

From Dust to Stardust is a story that closely parallels the life of Colleen Moore, a well-known silent film actress, although author Kathleen Rooney tells readers that it is fiction and not a biography. At first, I was distracted by the fact that many characters were historical while some were not. Once I got past that, however, the book was very entertaining. Doreen O'Dare, the story's heroine, decided as a child that she was meant to be an actor, and what she wanted more than anything was to act in the new medium of motion pictures. Her uncle, an influential newspaper editor in Chicago who had done a favor for a movie producer, obtained an audition for Doreen; the rest was history. At the age of only fourteen, with her beloved grandmother as a chaperone, she traveled by train to the West Coast from her home in Florida and began acting in pictures. The story flew along, full of anecdotal snippets about the lives of many early silent film stars and other well-known figures of the time.
The novel is well-researched, and the author has a demonstrable affection for her subject. Like the author, I fell in love with Colleen Moore's fairy castle at a young age. Because of her love of the Castle, Kathleen Rooney became interested in Colleen Moore's life. Housed in the lower level of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, the castle is something everyone, not just those with young children, should visit. The museum itself is fabulous, a wonderful experience and education for all ages.
One additional note of interest from the Afterword: the movie A Star Is Born was based on a screenplay and film written by a close friend of Colleen Moore (although uncredited) about Colleen's marriage.
Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the ARC of this novel.

Nothing but superlatives for this book. I'm just a little sad every time I remember Lillian's not a real person I might meet on the street one day. I suspect that won't stop me from looking around when I walk in New York, just in case...

You could hand over a dime and purchase a dream.
From Dust to Stardust by Kathleen Rooney

Fans of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk–and you are legion–will love Kathleen Rooney’s new novel From Dust to Stardust.

In the early days of the movies, a young girl follows her dreams and goes to Hollywood. Renamed Doreen O’Dare, stereotypically Irish, she works her way to fame. After a few years, knowing how Lillian Gish was forever typecast as a long -locked girl even as she aged, Doreen throws over her long curls for a bob and goody girl roles for flappers, predating Clara Bow who becomes famous as the vampish “It” girl.

Doreen finds a life-long forbidden love, and marries a handsome man with a fatal weakness for alcohol. But her rock is her family and Irish grandmother with her enchanting fairy stories.

Doreen is surrounded by famous actresses: Lillian Gish, dedicated to her craft and untouched by Hollywood excess; Marion Davies, a natural comedian forced into serious roles by her lover W. R. Hearst; the teenaged lover of Charlie Chaplin, Mildred Harris; Clara Bow, beautiful and tough.

When talking pictures come, everything changes. The studios give the actresses elocution lessons, but also winnow many out.

Stardust is still dust. After a while you want to brush it off.
From Dust to Stardust by Kathleen Rooney

Doreen’s Cinderella life turned out to be hard work, taking its toil on her health and her marriage.

Doreen had another life-long passion–collecting miniatures. She turned the doll house her father built her into a splendid fairy palace, using her jewels and the finest materials. It had miniature books signed by famous writers and diamond chandeliers.

During the Depression, Doreen took the house on the road to raise money for children’s charities. She donated it to a Chicago museum, and now in her later sixties, she is being interviewed about the doll house and her life, remembering all the stardust and dust of fame and love and loss, and the life that came after.

We read of a Hollywood run by “a pack of children, or at least by the childlike: “those who had not yet lost the capacity for wonder, who could dream during the daytime, who refused to draw a line between what was real and what was possible.” There are rivals and women who support each other, men who prey on the actresses and husbands who are unfaithful.

Inspired by the life of an early film star, Colleen Moore, who created the Fairy Castle that enchanted Rooney as a girl, the novel transports us back to Hollywood of a hundred years ago.

In the Author’s Note, I was happy to find a list of movies talked about in the book that are available to watch.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

Like many novels, the story was slow to build but felt rushed in the end. I wanted to like it more than I did.

I almost wanted to shelve this one on my GR Memoirs shelf, it seems so real! Lillian's voice is so true and her personality so delightful that as I read it I had to keep reminding myself that she was fictional. As it turns out, she and her story were based on a real person, whose archive the author mined for the story. She was well captured!

Didn't like. Dull and all the character voices were the same except when they were "other" to the main character aka not white, not straight. Very frustrating.

In this historical fiction, Lillian Boxfish, 85, is walking through Manhattan on New Year’s Eve, 1984, reflecting on her life. The book delves further into history through Lillian’s memories of the various places she has lived, people she has met, and significant milestones in her life. Lillian at one point was the highest paid woman in advertising and an acclaimed poet. She made difficult decisions, altering her career path based on marriage and motherhood, which at the time was even more challenging due to the social norms of the day.

The author has created a memorable character in Lillian, a spirited, independent, and capable senior woman with a stinging wit and a love of words. The writing is clever and filled with period details. The walk is a construct for the plot, which involves the ups-and-downs of Lillian’s eventful life, her choices, joys, and sorrows. Recommended to those who enjoy books about the city of New York or quiet reflections on a person’s life.

I have mixed thoughts of this book. Based on a true life story of a woman who lived in New York and was very accomplished at selling ads for Macy's, normally if I really liked a book, I will read more, especially if based on a real life story. But, the fact that I am not tempted to read more about this character shows my tepid review of the book.

On New Year's Eve Lillian Boxfish decides to leave a party and walk throughout New York. As she travels, she ruminates about her career, and life. She is spunky, brash and forward in many ways. A lover of New York, she has little understanding of those who grew weary of the crime and pace and moved out of the city.

Her judgments are quick, and at times brutal. She is not a person I would choose as a friend. I would find her interesting, but would move along to someone else to learn more about.

Well written, it simply was not a book I can recommend.

2.5 Stars½

Flying over fields, thinking of the peasants not here to harvest, the harvest itself not there, the earth out of which it would grow blown to smithereens. Thinking of the heads of the men, like stalks of wheat themselves, chopped by the reaper.
from Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey by Kathleen Rooney

It should bend credulity, reading such eloquent thoughts from the mind of a pigeon, and yet I easily fell into acceptance. Cher Ami, racing pigeon become war heroine, forever memorialized with her body taxidermized and on display at the Smithsonian Institute, is an astute and compassionate narrator. Alternating chapters, Major Charles Whittlesey narrates the human side of experiencing WWI, seven months of hell that cripples him for life, in spirit if not in body, hating his lionization and fame simply because he survived.

Given that over half the men under my command were dead, promotion was the last thing I felt I deserved. I wondered for a moment whether the army would have made me a full colonel had none of my men survived.
from Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey by Kathleen Rooney

Cher Ami and Whittlesey are heroine and hero of The Lost Battalion, dispensable cannon fodder sent into German territory, surrounded by the enemy, and attacked by friendly fire. Without rations or medical supplies, blankets or water, they were saved only because the press reported their story and the public latched onto the saga, so that finally President Wilson ordered their rescue. By that time, nearly a third of the men had died or been injured, their ammunition spent, all the pigeons flown. Cheri Ami got through the battle to report their situation, losing an eye and a leg in the flight.

Civilians demand heroes to process vast loss.
from Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey by Kathleen Rooney

People were desperate to believe. They wanted to have something to hold up as proof. Cheri Ami and the Major were used by the army for publicity, and both were ground down by it, suffering PTSD, Whittlesey with mustard gas damaging his lungs, Cher Ami wounded and crippled.

Why would they want me, having seen me for what I was: an officer who’d failed as a tactician and was failing as a rhetorician, a man who’d lost his battalion and now couldn’t find his voice?
from Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey by Kathleen Rooney

Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey was our book club read this month. We had so enjoyed Kathleen Rooney when she spoke with us about Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, one of the club’s most favorite reads ever, she invited her back.

The conversation immediately turned to pigeons and their use in WWI and how affected readers were by Cher Ami’s story. Rooney shared amazing stories of hearing from Whittlesey family members, both pro and con about her acknowledgment that Whittlesey was gay. Asked about how she lived with this story while writing, she replied that if a writer doesn’t feel deeply about their subject it can’t translate to the reader. Well, this novel did move the readers. My husband told that after finishing the novel, he heard the song The Green Field of France was suddenly tearful having just experienced the war through Rooney’s characters.

This is a war novel, and you know from the beginning that both characters will die. Like all the best war novels, it is an antiwar novel. Rooney does nothing to glorify the sacrifice of the men–and pigeons and horses–of WWI.

Rooney is doing the final edits of her next novel due out in the spring. We can’t wait!

Well written, bittersweet.

What a charming book!

So, after “Small Country” put my heart into a pistil and mortar and made fine organ dust out of it, I decided I needed something a little lighter. How about a book about an octogenarian taking a 4 mile stroll through midtown Manhattan while ruminating on all the events in her life? Perfect. I had an eye-opening experience reading “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk”. It’s kind of like a female version of Forrest Gump – a story that spanned across key periods of time in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Lillian is headstrong, progressive and a feminist and I fell immediately in love with her. And, reading this book made me think about my efforts to read diverse literature. I realized I tend to neglect age as a category. Specifically, this book inspired me to read more books by senior authors especially if they’re debut authors late in life. I’ll let you know how the experiment goes. If you follow me on Instagram, you can keep up with my stories and updates there.

Didn't like. Dull and all the character voices were the same except when they were "other" to the main character aka not white, not straight. Very frustrating.

I would give this 6 stars out of 5. Absolutely charming, witty and insightful. In one evening's walk the reader is taken through history- of feminism, advertising, courtesies and more. Lillian's history is remarkable and ordinary and her lively banter, both written and verbal is a delight for the senses. Reminiscent of the Count in A Gentleman in Moscow.

When I started this book I read it because it was a fictitious account of a lady who walks in Manhattan. It was somehow trumpeted as a historical journey, historical walk in the city. I read it because of the praise it received, and because I lived for some years in NYC.
Later I found out that Lilian Boxfish is based on an actual character called Margaret Fishback who was a poet and an advertising copywriter for R H Macy's in the heyday of print advertising.

I thought Lilian was an opinionated city brat. She loved the city that I loathed and could not wait to get away from. She made bad decisions in her life (and on her walks). And she spoke patronizingly to the people she met, although she might have though of herself as friendly, but I found her brash and loud, like New York itself, perhaps she was drawn like this on purpose. I could not recognize the character as a feminist. Yes she was fiercely independent, worked for as long as she could and stayed in the city she loved. But to be honest that was her stubborn nature, not her feminist principle.

Also, I was very much deflated after finding out that the book was "based on Fishback's life". I dislike this pronouncement because it neither frees me to enjoy the pure fiction nor educates me properly on the life of the person it is based on. I am cheated both ways. I do not get a proper story that germinated in the author's brain, nor a proper biography of someone that actually lived. It is my least preferred type of literature.

In all not a bad piece of writing. Read it if you are in love with eccentric and stubborn characters, the city of New York, or light poetry. There is stuff in there for you. For me it was a so-so deal, I like poetry, dislike New York, and feel cheated and stuck halfway between story and biography.

4.5 stars. Entertaining but also very well done. Creatively laid out so you travel with Ms. Boxfish through both her life and the streets of New York on one evening walk.

This is a novel about an elderly woman who in NYE 1984 decides to take a walk around NYC, and reminisces about her life. She was a copywriter for Macy’s and a poet. She was married and divorced, and has one son, and some grandchildren. She thinks about the relationships of her past, her work, and decisions made throughout her life. The novel was inspired by Margaret Fishback, the real as copywriter for Macy’s, but is fictional and not a biography.

An exceptional novel based upon the true war event named the Lost Battalion that occurred in 1918. Such a sad story and at times absolutely horrifying as war can only be, the men and carrier pigeons depicted will long live in my memory. I will never hear of the Lost Battalion again without envisioning Major Whittlesey and the carrier pigeon, Cher Ami, and their heroic efforts as Kathleen Rooney has re-invented them for us in her excellent novel.

Most highly recommended.

This story is historically informed fiction about Charles Whittlesey, the unintentional war hero of the Lost Battalion isolated by German forces in the Argonne Forest in October 1918. And of the carrier pigeon who was critical to their rescue, Cher Ami. At first I was put off by having alternate chapters narrated by a taxidermied carrier pigeon residing in the Smithsonian. But as the story progressed, it started to make perfect sense.

The narrators alternate chapters, describing their lives leading up to the war and the influences on their lives. Cher Ami provides a perspective of how animals view the wars of men and it's affect on the animals. Charles Whittlesey describes his internal conflicts about his sexuality and the awkward class distinctions in a battle group where those privileged with education and status are officers and those with less social and economic standing are under their command.

Both philosophize a bit (not excessively) about their war experience and the futility of war. They are both damaged physically by the war. Whittlesey finds that his war is not over after the armistice because of the relentless demands for him to make public appearances as a war hero. He finds an ultimate escape by booking a cruise on the SS Toloa. While Cher Ami remains on display as a memento of war at the Smithsonian.

Despite the rocky start to the book, I found it interesting and well written. I learned about a part of WWI that I had not known before.

This one felt really choppy and was a little hard to settle into initially, but either the writing smoothed out or I got used to it, and I really enjoyed it. It did some of the things I most value in books -- making me laugh, teaching me about things (homing pigeons used in World War I) I didn't know about, and showing some real human feeling. I picked the book up while browsing the shelves of my local bookshop for random finds. I run across plenty of duds when I do this, but I also find some gems, and this is one of the latter.

One of the best first novels I have read in a very long time. Woman takes walk in New York on New Years eve 1984, cross cutting with the earlier milestones of her life. She meets strangers, has odd encounters. That might speak to you, it might not. This book is so brilliant it wont' matter. Just read it. You will be very happy.