I’ve just finished taking a New Year’s Eve walk with Lillian Boxfish.

I know it’s not yet New Year’s Eve. Ms. Boxfish is the title character in Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, by Chicago author Kathleen Rooney. Ms. Boxfish loves walking through Manhattan, where she has lived for nearly 60 years, and she unexpectedly spends her New Year’s Eve (1984 into 1985) tromping through the city she loves, instead of curled up in bed falling asleep with a book as she had planned.

First of all, I feel compelled to say that falling asleep with a book makes Ms. Boxfish a woman I love. So does her habit of walking, aimless or otherwise. What I love even more is her indomitable spirit.

It’s only by accident that I opened this book up just as the end of the year was approaching. I’ve been wanting to read it for months, looked for it in bookstores, finally requested it from my library, and it arrived via interlibrary loan just in time for me to start it as Christmas approached. Ms. Boxfish says the stories she shares with a family she meets during her late-night trek “emphasize the serendipitous, even the magical,” and my timing in opening this book just before New Year’s Eve felt the same. The book captures both the melancholy and the hope that accompany year’s end, and Ms. Boxfish’s joie de vivre suppressed the melancholy and left me uplifted and ever so glad to have met her. She has a gift for making friends that reminds me of my late father-in-law, a man who cultivated a special relationship with everyone he knew, and who started meeting and befriending people on the internet way before that was a norm.

Even with the chaos, overwork and exhaustion that accompany Christmas for me, I devoured this book in just a few days and recommend it heartily. I’ve reviewed it over on Escape into Life, so you can read more there if you still need convincing before requesting it from the library or ordering it from your local indie bookseller (buy local!).

Long walks save lives, I think, both for their physical benefits and emotional ones. I love walking my neighborhood to notice the changes of seasons and little surprises of life, and I like walking new cities to get a feel for them and decide what to explore further. I learned a new word while reading and reading about Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk: flânerie. Current dictionaries define it as idleness, but Rooney says it refers specifically to idle, aimless walking, and my 1959 Webster’s confirms that as its original meaning. It’s a beauty of a word, and it deserves wider usage. Ms. Boxfish practices it, Rooney practices it, and I’m going to make even more of a point to practice it regularly thanks to both of them.

Meanwhile, I have new Christmas gift books to read, plus some still unread from last Christmas. That’s where I’m off to now.