Lillian on Life: A Novel - Couverture souple

“Lester’s novel about a tenacious, well-traveled heroine of a certain age is replete with the profound and comical observations of a vivacious spirit.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

"Lillian on Life is everything a debut novel should be: fresh, original, and unforgettable. In this short, but stylish, book Alison Jean Lester brings Lillian – a woman of a certain age – vividly to life. In exacting, economical and convincing prose, Lester's Lillian lives fully in all her sassy, wise and utterly original glory." -- Examiner.com, "Best Books of 2015"

“Dazzling...In short vignettes, Lillian looks back, drawing an impressionistic portrait of a bold life full of adventure—erotic and otherwise—in prose spiked with unflinching observations, riotous riffs and poignant reflections.” —The Washington Post

“Illuminating...The novel is a cleverly executed feminist bildungsroman that you could easily share with your mother, sister, friend, or, probably most appropriately, life coach.” —Nylon

"I absolutely loved Lillian on Life. It was a delight. The style of it so fresh and clever and subversive and there’s something very brave about it, especially for a first novel." —Kate Atkinson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Life After Life

“What a great voice, what energy and wit. I enjoyed Lillian's travels, her various jobs, and her lovers. She had moments of great wisdom—I was drawn especially to those—and in the midst of the humor and the happenings, a sentence or two of such profundity. I thought the book was very original and often extremely funny, but always with an edge. My favorite kind of humor. I completely loved it!” —Karen Joy Fowler, PEN/Faulkner award-winner and New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club 

“Lillian on Life is a quirky book with a very deep heart and soul. I found it full of life and full of wisdom.” —Erica Jong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fear of Flying

"A remarkably confident debut ... Unconventionally plotted, Lillian's tale is filled with lush details and cool observations about the twins of female freedom: contentment and compromise. A slim novel that feels just perfect—each thought measured, each syllable counted, a kind of haiku to an independent woman." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Debut author Lester brings to life a fascinating protagonist, Lillian, a middle-aged woman with a delightfully honest approach to life, love, and happiness.... Lillian is the cosmopolitan aunt we all wish we had—the one who always bestows the best advice just when it’s needed, knows the perfect gift to give for every occasion, and tells the most interesting stories about her life.... Lester has given readers the grand gift of Lillian’s wisdom, beauty, and candor in this lovely novel.” —Booklist 

“This lively and insightful debut novel holds up the decisions women make every day to analysis and introspection. It is startlingly frank and sometimes funny or shocking or heartbreaking. There’s a raw and intimate quality to the first-person narrative that counterbalances the vignette structure.... While this book is more demanding than typical women’s fiction, the rewards are worth the time. It’s a strong choice for book groups and readers seeking ‘something different.’” —Library Journal

“A wry and poignant look at middle age.... A mix of ‘live and let live’ and the dos and don’ts from her midcentury upbringing, the heroine of Lillian on Life slides off the page as real, complicated, and contradictory.... In Lillian, Lester has created a wry, self-conscious, introspective woman with a memorable voice to match. Like a portrait painted over and over, Lillian bears the evidence of many revisions. Her vulnerability is palpable in every story she relates. Each chapter acts like a signpost on Lillian’s journey to find peace with herself.” —Bookpage 

“I’ll never forget Lillian on Life. Looking backward, she’s brutally honest about her needs, her lovers, her parents. Salinger could have invented her . . . Roth would have loved her . . . and so will you. A rare book, a little raunchy, but very rich and very real.” —Ilene Beckerman, author of Love, Loss and What I Wore

“In this remarkably mature first novel, Alison Jean Lester has channeled the worldly yet wistful elegance of Colette to portray an unforgettable heroine. Lillian’s provocative reflections on love, vanity, sexual intimacy, and surviving as an independent woman over half a century are deeply moving.” —Julia Glass, National Book Award–winning author of Three Junes and The Widower’s Tale

“What a splendid book! By turns acerbic and warm, urbane and homespun, Lillian on Life is—like its protagonist—charming, funny, and unabashedly smart. But as slender and enjoyable as this book is, it’s much more than simply a lark. Each elegantly compressed chapter leaves us luxuriating in thought: about the snippets of experience so vividly depicted, and about those that have been, with perfect art, left out.” —Leah Hager Cohen, author of The Grief of Others and No Book but the World

I’m fully awake, I think it’s Ted. Of course

it never is.

That’s okay. This morning I watched Pandora walk

the length of Michael’s naked body. His skin turned to

gooseflesh as she started up his thigh. Her pretty gray paw

depressed the flesh of his belly, and his sleeping penis rolled

toward his hipbone. She stepped off him at the shoulder.

She could have walked on the bed; there was a little space

between him and me. Maybe he doesn’t exist for her. Maybe

she was saying that he’s no better than a mattress. She snuggled

into my neck, purring smugly like an idling Jaguar.

I wanted Michael to wake up and see us like that: an

independent woman beloved of her elegant cat. But of

course he didn’t. They don’t. They wake up at all the wrong

times, and see all the wrong things.

To be fair, we drank a lot of red wine last night, and I

can hold it better than most people. My eyes still snap open

in the morning. Wine is still my friend. I hate that I can’t

drink coffee in the wee hours and then sleep anymore,

though. The body evolves, then it devolves. It’s terrible. One

day you’re someone you know, and the next you’re someone

you don’t. You dry up. It’s embarrassing.

Every once in a while I wonder if I’m glad Ted didn’t

stick around for my menopause. A woman has so many

things to hide after fifty. I ask myself if we could have tolerated

so much physical change, followed by dotage.

I don’t have to wonder with Michael. He comes and

goes. There isn’t time for him to notice everything.

The trick at my age is to keep some K-Y Jelly in an attractive

pot on the bedside table. You squeeze it out of the

tube into the pot for when you have a visitor. When his

hands are beginning to move on you, you turn away and

slip your fingers into the jelly. He can caress your bottom

or your shoulders in the meantime. When you turn back

you take him in your hand and lubricate him. Maybe he’s

not even erect yet, and this way you have the satisfaction

of knowing that what you’re doing for him is working.

I’m not sure there’s a bigger satisfaction than that in life.

And as long as he’s feeling it’s for him, you’ve diverted his

attention—and even your own—from the fact that the lubrication

is for you. On top of it all you maintain your sense

that you’ve still got plenty of sap in your tree. Name me a

wife who does that.

Michael’s wife is crazy. She probably didn’t seem it when

she was young. She probably just seemed young. Now she

just seems silly. That hair band of hers. The tangential

things she says. She’s almost as tall as I am, and only about

five years younger, fifty-two I think, but she blinks at you.

She stands up tall and her chestnut hair sits perfectly turned

up on her shoulders in the same way I’m sure it has since

1960, and she smiles and blinks, as if to protect herself from

anything modern or unpleasant. Imagine life by her side.

How would you ever connect? Well, you wouldn’t.

Do some people not need excitement? I’ve always

thought humans were too complicated not to need stimulation.

What does Michael do to keep his wife hanging on?

Or what does she do that keeps him married to her? I don’t

like to ask. I’ve learned not to cling.

He sleeps really late when he’s with me. I don’t think it’s

allowed at home, certainly not naked. He’s intimated as

much. Separate beds too.

I thought my parents’ marriage had come to an end the

day their twin beds arrived. I didn’t know it was happening

all over the neighborhood, probably all over the country,

and Mother was merely keeping up with the Joneses. But

how often did the Joneses go up to my parents’ bedroom?

Never. Mother just felt them walking around in her head,

and had to keep up.