Summer Reading List: Lola Bensky

Lola Bensky
Lily Brett
9781926428475

Goodreads

Lola, a rock journalist, is followed by the dead.  She interviews a slew of famous rockstars- asking them boring, deadpan questions, and then getting distracted and talking about the traumatic experiences of her parents in a Nazi death camp. She then goes off on reveries in her head, remembering awkward scenes from her childhood.  The trauma of living with parents who are so altered by their experiences as Polish Jews causes Lola to struggle with her weight and with anxiety.  

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with this book.  On the one hand, I love the subject matter.  On the other hand, I hate the awkward parallel that Brett tries to draw between the trauma of Auschwitz and the trauma of Free Love and drugs in the sixties and seventies.  I also hate the detached, monotonous narratorial style of this novel, which almost seems to be first person except that the narrator constantly refers to the protagonist by her full name.  Lola Bensky did this, then Lola Bensky did that.  The novel also jumps around in time, sometimes in the middle of the paragraph. 

Yet, I couldn't stop reading.

Go figure.

Someone tell me why I didn't throw this book aside, please?

2 out of 5 false eyelashes.