by Lily Brett
Lola looked up. Mick Jagger was looking at her. She looked away and then she looked back at him. He was still looking at her. He had a slightly quizzical expression on his face.
Lola smiled at him. He smiled at her. She wondered whether she should go over and say hello to him. She felt awkward about it. What would she say? ‘Hi, I’m the fat Australian journalist who interviewed you when I was nineteen and you were twenty-three.’ Or ‘Hi, I’m Lola Bensky, I argued with you about the meaning of the word “propagate”, and you were right. It was a long time ago. I also talked about the flood of cabbage into the Lodz Ghetto, in Poland, which was followed by mass diarrhoea.’
Lola didn’t think so. What else could she say? ‘Hello, I met you years ago. I talked about how in Auschwitz they cultivated diseases like cholera, typhus and pneumonia to inject into prisoners as experiments and they grew the bacteria and other microbes in cultures made from live human flesh because it was much less valued than anything that came from a cow or a pig. And you made me a cup of tea.’
Lola could see that Mick Jagger was still looking at her. She smiled at him. He smiled at her and nodded.
Lola Bensky
Reading Group Notes
While most of Lily Brett’s Lola Bensky is set in 1967, the book is a spirited account of a woman’s life. Why was 1967 such a significant moment in time for Lola, and the anchor for telling her life story?
Lola’s dream job at nineteen as a foreign correspondent rock journo puts her in conversation with the biggest music stars of the day. But in trying to capture for her readers the zest of the present and the new breed of rock star, Lola finds herself more and more preoccupied with her family’s messy past. Lola, Edek and Renia all occupy a unique time in history. How does Lily Brett create and play on the contrast in their experiences, and to what dramatic effect?
Holocaust ‘survivors’ Renia and Edek each cope with their horrific wartime experiences in very different ways, while adjusting to their new life in Australia. How does this impact on the relationship each has with Lola?
When nineteen-year-old Lola isn’t interviewing rock stars, she is planning diets. Renia is constantly niggling at Lola to lose weight, and yet as an older, slimmer woman Lola wonders how Renia would react to her new body shape. Why?
Saturday afternoons spent at the Tivoli Theatre in Melbourne with Edek are among Lola’s most cherished childhood memories. What important role does Jackie Clancy of the Tivoli play in Lola’s life?
While Lola Bensky is a work of fiction, it is closely based on the life of author Lily Brett, and her experience as a music journalist in the sixties. Through the character of Lola, we are invited to listen in on one-on-one conversations with some of the biggest rock stars of the day and of our times. Do Brett’s portraits of stars like Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison and Cher alter our perceptions of them? What does Lola Bensky have to say about fame?
One of Lily Brett’s most applauded skills as a writer is her ability to combine humour and tragedy. How does she achieve this in Lola Bensky, and what power does this bring to the book?
At the Monterey International Pop Festival, Lola is moved repeatedly by a contagious joy and a sense of social revolution – a feeling that the world is changing. Do the flower children change the world? Is Lola’s world changed?
When Lola returns to Melbourne from her trip to the US she marries Mr Former Rockstar, as her single friend Lillian Roxon predicted, simply because he asks her. Eventually Mr Someone Else steps into Lola’s life as something else wonderful and, over the years, shows her a different sort of marriage. How does Lily Brett portray love, devotion and marriage in Lola Bensky?
Mr Someone Else offers Lola new love and a new life in New York. Just as moving is the new lease on life Edek finds in New York. How do place and heart intersect in this novel?
Later in life, Lola finds peace writing detective fiction. Her creations of Pimp, Harry and Schlomo are like real people to her. Why does this act of writing and creating calm and bolster Lola in a way that therapy has failed to do?
In the final scene of Lola Bensky, at the glamorous fundraising dinner hosted by Phyllis-Elissa and Elwood Earlwood, Lola is delighted to see Mick Jagger alive, thriving, happy and successful. But the ultimate triumph is Lola’s. Discuss the book’s finale.
HAMISH HAMILTON
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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2012
Text copyright © Lily Brett 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved.
penguin.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-74253-600-2