The star of Annie Vanderbilt‘s gorgeous debut novel, THE SECRET PAPERS OF MADAME OLIVETTI, is Lily Crisp. As the author states on her website,

Lily Crisp emerged from my imagination fully blown, a combination of fearlessness and vulnerability, a naturally erotic but not neurotic woman — flawed, as we are all flawed, well meaning and committed in spite of which she sometimes takes detours that are not in her best interest.

Annie Vanderbilt has written a beautiful novel about one woman’s desire to both live her life authentically and understand the life she has lived. She writes with clear and heart-stopping prose that will resonate with every reader. I want to give this book to all of my friends and family. I want them to discover Lily Crisp and fall in love with her, as I did. Vanderbilt created a fully developed, living, breathing character. The life she created for Lily is real and flawed and beautiful. When describing how she came about writing Lily’s story, this is what Vanderbilt said.

I saw the scenes, smelled them, and felt them long before I attempted to paint them in words.

Within this framework I envisaged a plot that was densely layered, moving fluidly between past and present, so that a delicious soup of intrigue, lushness, passion, disaster, humor, and quirkiness would enhance the background flavors of my settings. I wanted to write about long-term marriage and love as it grows, changes, falters, and resurrects itself, but not in some Pollyanna feel-good form. I didn’t want a heroine who shone too perfectly, or one who whined and wallowed in regret and remorse. I wanted a woman who knew about death and had lived long enough, after thrashing about in the thick of life’s struggles, to maintain some measure of personal perspective and a sense of humor.

Fans of Elizabeth Berg and Elizabeth Gilbert’s EAT, PRAY, LOVE will devour this book and be yearning for more! We will have to keep an eye out for Vanderbilt’s next novel.