Smart, poignant, funny, and wholly original, Lillian on Life is as fresh and surprising as fiction gets.

On a New York morning after a lot of red wine, 57-year-old Lillian wakes up next to her married lover and takes stock.

How did she get here?

Where is she going?

Can this be as good as it is going to get?

With her own hard-won brand of wisdom, Lillian reflects on a life which began in 1930s Missouri and developed in Munich, Paris, and London. She draws a vivid picture of the unpaved road between traditional and modern opportunities for women, of societal expectations and parental disappointment, of wins and losses in love, and of professional and personal choices, all of which have led to her solitary breakfast this morning.

In Lillian, Alison Jean Lester has created an indelible and brutally honest portrait of a witty, charming, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes heartbroken woman becoming herself during the decades of change following World War II.