Lola Bensky: A Novel

About this book

Lola Bensky is a nineteenyearold rock journalist who irons her hair straight and asks a lot of questions. A highschool dropout shes not sure how she got the job but shes been sent by her Australian newspaper right to the heart of the London music scene at the most exciting time in music history: 1967. Lola spends her days planning diets and interviewing rock stars. In London Mick Jagger makes her a cup of tea Jimi Hendrix (possibly) propositions her and Cher borrows her false eyelashes. At the Monterey International Pop Festival Lola props up Brian Jones and talks to Janis Joplin about sex. In Los Angeles she discusses being overweight with Mama Cass and tries to pluck up the courage to ask Cher to return those false eyelashes. Lola has an irrepressible curiosity but she begins to wonder whether the questions she asks these extraordinary young musicians are really a substitute for questions about her parents calamitous past that cant be asked or answered. As Lola moves on through marriage motherhood psychoanalysis and a close relationship with an unexpected pair of detectives she discovers the question of what it means to be human is the hardest one for anyoneincluding herselfto answer.