Lola Bensky

A funny and moving novel based on Lily Brett’s time as a rock journalist in London and the States in the sixties.

Lola Bensky is a nineteen-year-old rock journalist who irons her hair straight and asks a lot of questions. A high-school dropout, she’s not sure how she got the job - but she’s been sent by her Australian newspaper right to the heart of the London music scene at the most exciting time in music history- 1967.

In London, New York and LA, Lola interviews the biggest rock stars of the day, including Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger and Janis Joplin. But she begins to wonder whether the questions she asks are really a substitute for questions about her parents’ past that can’t be asked or answered. With time, she discovers the question of what it means to be human is the hardest one for anyone - including herself - to answer.

Drawing on her own experiences as a young journalist, Lily Brett shows in Lola Bensky just why she is one of our most distinctive and internationally acclaimed authors.

‘Brett has created in Lola a typically winning character- curious, self-conscious, naive and neurotic, a wary Jewish girl locked in trench warfare with her waistline.’ The Age

‘Funny, warm and insightful.’ Herald Sun

‘A book that will entertain legions of readers.’ Courier Mail