Lillian on Life

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

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

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, 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

I absolutely loved it. A delight … so fresh and clever and subversive - Kate Atkinson, author of Life After Life

A beautifully written, deft debut; the edgy, elegant Lillian will stay with you - Adele Parks

A dazzling first novel … 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 - Washington Post

A delicious, sweet-sad debut novel - Sainsbury’s Magazine