Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses alcohol use disorder.

In the physical and cultural landscape of Lillian Boxfish’s New York City, the only constant is change, but memory has the power to preserve the past. The novel builds the relationship between memory and change through its approach to the passage of time. By setting the novel on New Year’s Eve, Rooney develops tension between past and future, as the holiday is a time for both retrospection and resolutions; for every landmark Lillian visits, a powerful memory is revealed alongside a recent or impending alteration. New York City—like New Year’s Eve—is a symbol of perpetual newness, and Lillian sees her life rise and fall alongside the city’s fortunes, noting wistfully that when she arrived, “everything was new then. So was I” (63). Her memories form a palimpsest for the changed city and prevent her from becoming overwhelmed by the passage of time.

As a character, Lillian is largely constant over the course of the novel. However, the city and society change around her in ways that she both accepts and critiques. When she says that “[t]he city I inhabit now is not the city that I moved to in 1926” (10), she introduces the friction between the changing place and her memories of what made her love it.