Lily BrettCritiques
Auteur de Too Many Men
Critiques
Esther, Australierin jüdisch-polnischer Abstammung, lebt mit ihrem Mann, einem Maler, in einem New Yorker Loft.
Mit Edek und seiner liebevoll um ihn besorgten Tochter Ruth stellt die Autorin aus früheren Büchern bekannte Akteure in den Mittelpunkt. Der 87-jährige Edek besucht seine Tochter Ruth, erfolgreiche Inhaberin eines Korrespondenzbüros in New York. Nachdem seine Versuche, sich in dem Büro nützlich zu machen, scheitern, geht er eigene Wege und gründet mit 2 Polinnen - die eine umgarnt er als umschwärmter Liebhaber - ein Spezialitätenrestaurant. Die polnischen Fleischbällchen werden ein Hit, das ganze Unternehmen, von Ruth argwöhnisch beäugt, ein Renner. - Eine in wirbelnder Lebendigkeit leicht und spritzig erzählte Geschichte.
Das ist in Kürze zusammengefasst der Inhalt des Buches. Wie immer bei Lily Brett beschreibt er im Endeffekt ihr eigenes Leben, das Aufwachsen mit den traumatisierten Eltern, das Sich-Befreien daraus. Ich lese Lily Brett gern, aber da in jedem Buch ziemlich das gleiche steht, schrumpft meine Motivation immer mehr. Die Konstruktion dieses Buches überzeugt mich nicht. Auf der einen Seite stehen die vielen Gespräche mit den Rockgrößen der 1970er, von denen ein Großteil nicht lange lebt. Lola ist offensichtlich eine gute Journalistin, obwohl sie selbst eigentlich nur zwei Themen kennt: das Schicksal ihrer Eltern und ihre Körperfülle. Auf der anderen Seite ist dann Lola als erwachsene Frau. Sie hat Therapien gemacht, lebt wie ihr Vater Edek in New York, ist glücklich verheiratet und hat drei Kinder. Zudem ist sie endlich schlank. Selbst Mick Jagger goutiert am Ende, dass sie sich gut rausgemacht hat. Mir ist wirklich unklar, was Lily Bertt mit dieser Verknüpfung zu den 1970ern sagen will. Vll. hätte sich Lily Brett lieber nur auf Lola als Journalistin beschränken sollen und den Bezug zu ihrer Geschichte und ihrer Figur weglassen können.
Ruth ist eine Frau um die 50, die sich wegen allem Gedanken macht und sehr kontrolliert lebt. Sie isst nur wenig um nicht zuzunehmen, sie kommt kaum aus Manhattan raus. Dabei hätte sie alle Möglichkeiten, sie ist klug, sie ist wohlhabend. Schon die von ihr angedachte Gründung einer Frauengruppe stellt sie vor fast unlösbare Probleme. Dabei setzt sich Ruth durchaus selbstkritisch und selbstironisch mit ihren Einschränkungen auseinander und möchte etwas ändern.
Edek hingegen, aber auch seine 69-jährigen Freudinnen Zofia und Walentyna, nehmen das Leben, wie es kommt. Sie essen Klopse, sie tragen schräge Klamotten, sie gehen Risiken ein sind frei von Bewertungen der Außenwelt. Trotz vieler Schwierigkeiten, Verluste und Rückschläge, die sie im Leben erfahren haben, ziehen sie ihr Ding durch. Sie haben Chuzpe.
Ich fand das Buch recht schön, zum Teil auch sehr lustig. Es ist eher leichte Kost, da habe ich von Lily Brett schon tiefer gehendes gelesen. Aber gerade das macht das Buch sehr lesenswert. Das Buch reiht sich thematisch und vom Stil her nahtlos in ihre anderen Bücher ein. Sie schreibt letztendlich immer über sich selbst. Aber das macht sie gut.
The idea of living in New York, one of the greatest cities in the world and the quintessential modern village, has been expounded endlessly in the literary works of Don Delillo, Truman Capote and Paul Auster, and in films by Woody Allen. What grabbed my attention in this little piece of gem, which title instantly announces itself, is Lily Brett’s poignant and humorous depiction of the everyday banalities and trivialities that many New Yorkers face. The book was clearly written and published before 9/11, which helps the everyday reader in appreciating the qualitative aspects of the city without deference to the tragic events of that day, and which pre-occupied its citizens with the threat of terrorism and the intrusive, hypermetropic tendencies for surveillance.
Brett affirms her pre-terroristic sentiment about the city in the opening lines: ‘No one is frightened of New York anymore. The city, which used to intimidate its inhabitants, is, today, inhabited by teenagers, mothers, aunties, uncles, shoppers and strollers. No one looks scared.’ Reading her passages now, more than a decade after 9/11, I wondered at first if her observation still rings true today. The premise made me want to read on, with the view to gaining a clearer insight into New York-living habits to satisfy my own desire of one day living in the city.
An accomplished essayist and writer of fiction and poetry on human affairs and emotions, as exemplified in her award-winning novel, 'Too Many Men', and her funny tome to love, food, ageing, motherhood and sex in 'In Full View', Brett captures in these essays brief moments of illumination and small epiphanies on what it feels like to be an ‘outsider-looking-in’-inhabitant of her adopted city home.
The vignette-style pieces on various subjects (germs, smells, street signs, presents, cars and non-fat yoghurts) are smartly woven into sharp narratives about how New Yorkers discard personal possessions, of the disparity of city-living and escapism to the countryside and the Hamptons, on how vivid memories of her time in East Village linger on as she traverses the wider avenues of Manhattan. The narratives are simple to read, with uncomplicated sentence structures. The chapters are short and therefore easily accessible, and yet they provide the full experience of having gone where she has gone, of being accosted by slow-walkers who remind you that walking fast in New York will cause lines on the face, on how ‘mugger’ stations and areas have now been replaced by Prada stores and glittering shopfronts. Brett’s yearning to maintain the sense of place and character in the New York she first knew of, upon transplanting herself from Australia over a decade ago, literally jumps out of the pages, as she writes about the sense of displacement and of wonderment as to why the city makes one remember fear more easily than any moment of happiness spent in it.
Brett’s writing delightfully compresses into witty anecdotes the things we all normally take for granted: the smell of freshly-baked bread wafting from a newly-opened bakery, the honking of car horns that makes up the city’s soundtrack, the essence of being single in a world that frowns on being too single for too long, the heralding of winter by the thankful thought of not seeing people in shorts. As she gazes at these small details with a myopic eye, the minute meanings of trivial, almost negligible, thoughts and things become more significant in the wide world we all live in.
The only aspect of this piece that I find lacking is the meagre portrayal of the desolate and the dispossessed, which surely still inhabit the golden miles of New York to this day. Apart from a brief reference to panhandlers who seem to have developed a degree of diplomacy in appreciating her good looks, Brett does not offer any other insights into the darker elements of the city that would have rendered the narrative even more sympathetic and less self-absorbed. Beyond this critical observation, the book is a highly accomplished piece about the place and the people that revel in it.
Brett brilliantly writes in 'New York' not just about the place, the city or the state that emboldens itself with the roll of the words in one’s tongue. It is also about the sense of belonging that one yearns for, and often fails to find, in a foreign place that is now home, the kind that Nikki Gemmell once wrote about in an essay on her desire to come back to Sydney as an expat living in London. Through snatches of brief conversations and interactions with strangers, Brett manages to bring a certain sense of humanity and sensitivity to the way one would regard a well-worn but still-grandiose city, the kind that goes beyond its glitter and below its oft-exposed navel. It provides a raw introspection of how the city views itself in the bigger world while prompting us to look more closely, more honestly, at our own selves.
(This review appeared on http://www.ramonloyola.org)
Also: Ich war zwar sehr neugierig auf das Buch - auch, weil es eines ist, das ich mir wahrscheinlich trotzdem selbst nicht gekauft hätte - nicht so ganz mein Thema und der reale und virtuelle Stapel ungelesener Bücher viel zu hoch.
Gefangengenommen haben mich dann die Treffen mit den vielen Woodstockstars, die Lola interviewt, oder eigentlich erzählt sie ihnen die Geschichte ihrer Eltern, die das Konzentrationslager überlebt haben- oder irgendwie auch nicht. Lola wird dadurch auch zu einer gerade eben überlebenden, ohne eigentlich zu wissen, was mit ihr los ist. Ihre Äußerungen lassen die Stars auch einen Teil von sich zeigen, was sie menschlich und unkonventionell erscheinen lässt.
Ich kann es ja nur vermuten, aber wahrscheinlich bekommt man auch einen Einblick in die jüdische Mentalität, wenn ich das einfach einmal so wenig konkret schreibe, aber in diesem Buch ist viel Stimmung, Empathie und wie es jemanden durchs Leben treiben kann, die das schwierige Erbe ihrer Eltern mitleben muss.
Trotz der für mich schon bedrückenden persönlichen Situation - Dicksein, Panikattaken, Sorge um die Mutter - ist das Buch locker und schnell zu lesen, manchmal auch komisch. Vielleicht macht diese Mischung von komisch und tragisch den jüdischen Humor aus.
There’s something rather compelling about Lola’s character. Perhaps it’s her wide-eyed innocence, which doesn't seem to diminish as she gets older, or her weight-obsessed introspection, or her Woody Allen styled neurosis that later becomes a series of phobias. Or maybe it's just the way she openly becomes absorbed with the most domestic aspects of her famous subject’s lives. They clearly think so too. Jimi Hendrix invites her over to his place to see him in his hair curlers. Mick Jagger offers her a cup of tea and later phones her to invite her over to meet Paul McCartney. Janice Joplin confides in Lola that she was a fat, pimply misfit as a teenager, and reassures her that she’s nowhere near as big as Mama Cass.
The story is told in several parts, moving through key timeframes in Lola’s life. It begins in London with Lola at nineteen. Then moves to New York the following year. The next section moves to Melbourne when Lola is married to "Mr Former Rock Star" and beginning to become seriously agoraphobic. Then we move forward in time to Lola at fifty-one, a successful author in New York with her second husband, "Mr Someone Else". The following chapter goes back in time to Lola’s 20th year at the Monterey International Pop Festival, and the book ends with Lola in the New York City of the present – at sixty-three years of age.
Though Brett is adamant that the books she calls fiction are indeed fictional, she has also admitted that Lola Bensky follows her ‘real life’ experiences pretty closely, from the protagonists initials through to how she looks, and the interviews she conducted as a young journalist during the sixties. Reading the book you get the definite sensation that you’re experiencing a unique insight into rock stars like Hendrix, Cher, Mama Cass, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Pete Townsend and Mick Jagger. Hendrix, Cher, Joplin, and Jagger come across very well indeed – presenting a warm, thoughtful, and surprisingly sane image through the pages of this book. Jim Morrison and Pete Townsend in particular come across as odious: unpleasant, immature, and twisted. Reading Lola’s responses to these people, and her own sense of herself as a young Jew, and of course, as is always the case in Brett’s book, her sense of what it means to be the child of Holocaust survivors, is fascinating. That these famous people also respond to Lola’s experiences as much as she responds to theirs, adds to the power of this story.
But there is always something a little detached about Lola, even as she sweats through heavy makeup and tight fishnet stockings, panics about going outside, plans yet another diet, or worries about her parents dying. We never really get under her skin. She keeps the reader at arm’s length by telling us how she feels rather than showing us:
Lola felt bad. She couldn’t beleive Renia’s response to the news that she was leaving the man who, Lola thought, Renia had possibly, initially, hoped she would not marry. She really hoped that her mother wasn’t wishing she had died in Auschwitz. (130)
The result is an odd deadpan quality. However, it doesn’t hurt the novel. Instead Lola comes across as droll, peppering her slightly naive demeanour with rather intense and poetic observations about her parents’ pain:
For Renia, the future had changed. Overnight. It had spun on its axis and cracked and crazed adn fractured. It was split into pieces with fissures and chinks and splinters. Overnight, everything had changed. One minute Renia was a beautiful and studious teenager. The next minute she was, like all the other Jews of Lodz, a bedraggled prisoner, imprisoned in a universe bereft of sustenance of almost every sort. (166)
The same quiet, almost detached insights apply to her perception of the rock stars she meets. Lola isn’t dazzled or even excited by them. Instead she gives us a very down-to-earth picture of interviewees such as Brian Jones, who is so stoned that when she asks him whether he thinks the world is changing, he checks his pockets and indicates that he doesn’t have any spare change. Then he promptly nods out. She’s proud of Cher, even though she never gets back the rhinestone encrusted false eyelashes Cher borrowed. Lola wonders whether John Weider’s parents minded him being in a rock band. She argues with Mama Cass about who is fatter.
Overall, Lola Bensky is a funny, easy to read novel, which conceals its pithy story about healing and transformation in funky fashion, rock and roll gossip, and a great deal of verve.
Article first published as Book Review: Lola Bensky by Lily Brett on Blogcritics.
Zu finden im Erdgeschoss: DR, BRET
mj (25.9.12)
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Stadtbuechereiibk | 5 autres critiques | Sep 25, 2012 |
Stadtbuechereiibk | 5 autres critiques | Sep 25, 2012 | In the novel, Ruth yearns to visit Poland with her father, Edek, who is much less eager to return to the country of his youth, where he lost virtually every member of his family during the Holocaust and where his happy boyhood ended with so much suffering. His wife, Ruth's mother, died several years before, and Ruth is all he has left. So the old man, who lives in Australia, agrees to meet his beloved daughter in Poland.
Few Jews remain in Poland, they find, but the strong anti-Semitism remains. The Poles have turned Jews into a tourist attraction. There are Jewish restaurants, Jewish cabarets and Jewish gifts shops, none of them owned or operated by Jews. The Auschwitz death camp is now called a museum, and Ruth goes into a rage every time she hears the words "Auschwitz Museum."
This may not sound like a comic novel, but it is actually quite hilarious. Edek is a delightful character. His speech habits, his large appetite for Polish food, his practice of running wherever he goes, leaving Ruth far behind, and his romance with a large-breasted Polish woman will keep readers amused.
The humor does not detract from the pathos as Ruth and Edek visit the building where he grew up (and find his parents' fine china and other goods still being used by the present owners), tour the area that was once the Jewish ghetto where Jews were forced to live under terrible conditions and then go to Auschwitz, where Edek can point to the very spot where he used to sleep.
The novel ends with some mysteries still unresolved, which makes Brett's subsequent novels required reading. One mystery is this book's enigmatic title. A gypsy fortune teller once told Ruth that she has "too many men" in her life. True, she has had three husbands and several lovers, but right now Edek is the only man in her life. She doesn't believe in fortune tellers, yet she can't get the words out of her mind. What can they possibly mean? The reader, like Ruth, will be left wondering about that.
Llodz, Cracowie et Auschwitz jouent un rôle central et le lecteur suit une confrontation très douleureuse avec le passé. (La cupidité de ceux qui ont profité et profitent toujours de la shoah est littéralement nauséabonde.)
Roman bouleversant qui comporte aussi beaucoup de dialogues d'un humour (noir) irrésistible.
La suite de cette histoire se trouve dans le roman "chuzpe" (you gotta have balls).
am Anfang kommt man etwas schwerer rein, aber dann ist es ein sehr nettes, etwas anderes Buch. Die Hauptakteurin ist eine total norotische Jüdin, aber die Geschichte des Vaters mit seinem "Klops-Restaurant" und wie er sich letztendlich in seiner sehr charmanten Art durchsetzt, ist ein sehr lesenswerter Teil der Geschichte.
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In the earlier novel New Yorker Ruth Rothwax, the daughter of two Auschwitz survivors, persuades her father, Edek, to visit Poland with her and return to the place where he lost so many friends and relatives. While in Poland the old man becomes enamored with Zofia, a busty and aggressive Polish woman, whom Ruth instantly dislikes.
Now in the second book Edek has moved to New York City from Australia and "helps" his daughter with her successful letter-writing and greeting card business. Mostly he just gets in the way, and Ruth tries to persuade him to get involved in some activity outside her office. Then suddenly he does, and Ruth becomes more frustrated by his absence than she was when he was purchasing office supplies she didn't need.
The explanation, she learns, is that Zofia and her quiet friend Walentyna have migrated from Poland and moved in with her father. Ruth had thought she was rid of Zofia when they left Poland, but now she is back in their lives, apparently to stay.
Zofia, in her late 60s and about 20 years younger than Edek, turns out to be a terrific cook and a bundle of energy. Zofia, Edek and Walentyna come up with a plan to open a meatball restaurant in an unpromising part of New York City. Edek promises to support the project financially, but since Ruth supports Edek, that means her money will be needed to open the restaurant. She's convinced it can never succeed, but unable to say no to her father, she loans them the money anyway.
While all this is going on, Ruth is trying to start a group for middle-aged and older women to meet and talk about topics, like sex, they might not otherwise talk about, although from the conversations reported in the novel, women of all ages talk about these topics all the time with or without a support group. But if Ruth is so committed to supporting women, why does she have such negative feelings toward Zofia, whom her father obviously adores? Everyone else, including her husband, her children, her friends and her work associates, love Zofia and think the restaurant is a great idea. So why does Ruth feel she must protect her father from her?
Reading the first of these autobiographical novels helps us understand the second. Ruth still blames the Polish people, all of them, for what happened to her family members at Auschwitz. She must somehow soften the deep-seated biases that conflict with her love for her more forgiving father and her wish for his happiness.½