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This is the story of Lillian, a single woman reflecting on her choices and imagining her future. Born in the Midwest in the 1930s; Lillian lives, loves, and works in Europe in the fifties and early sixties; she settles in New York and pursues the great love of her life in the sixties and seventies. Now it's the early nineties, and she's taking stock. Throughout her life, walking the unpaved road between traditional and modern choices for women, Lillian grapples with parental disappointment and societal expectations, wins and loses in love, and develops her own brand of wisdom.
Lillian on Life lifts the skin off the beautiful, stylish product of an era to reveal the confused, hot-blooded woman underneath
"Starred Review. A slim novel that feels just perfect—each thought measured, each syllable counted, a kind of haiku to an independent woman." - Kirkus
"I absolutely loved Lillian on Life. It was a delight ... so fresh and clever..." - Kate Atkinson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Life After Life
"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 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." - Melissa Brown, BookPage
This information about Lillian on Life was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alison Jean Lester is an American writer and corporate communication skills coach who lives in Singapore. Born in California in 1966, she has traveled all her life and has variously studied, worked, and raised a family in the United Kingdom, Italy, China, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore.
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