LILY NARCISSUS
Surrounded by expats and intrigue, in Vietnam War era Asia where the suburban life they knew is just a memory, an American family is irrevocably changed. Lily crafts herself a new persona and purpose, eclipsing her diplomat husband. Their kids grow up to play opposing roles in the war. Mysterious Rocky may be Lily's friend, or her lover. In a continent aflame, will her family hold together or whirl apart?
Fiction/ 978-1-956692-36-5/ Oct. 20, 2022
Surrounded by expats and intrigue, in Vietnam War era Asia where the suburban life they knew is just a memory, an American family is irrevocably changed. Lily crafts herself a new persona and purpose, eclipsing her diplomat husband. Their kids grow up to play opposing roles in the war. Mysterious Rocky may be Lily's friend, or her lover. In a continent aflame, will her family hold together or whirl apart?
Fiction/ 978-1-956692-36-5/ Oct. 20, 2022
Surrounded by expats and intrigue, in Vietnam War era Asia where the suburban life they knew is just a memory, an American family is irrevocably changed. Lily crafts herself a new persona and purpose, eclipsing her diplomat husband. Their kids grow up to play opposing roles in the war. Mysterious Rocky may be Lily's friend, or her lover. In a continent aflame, will her family hold together or whirl apart?
Fiction/ 978-1-956692-36-5/ Oct. 20, 2022
Praise for LILY NARCISSUS
This ambiguity, a haziness that engulfs the text, is a strong part of the novel’s appeal. As is often the case in art — and life — much remains unanswered. In a postscript, Lerner points out that Lily’s story is inspired by his own experiences as the child of a foreign service officer posted to Taipei in 1957 and his mother’s letters back home from that period. Here and there, there are some historic details — or omission thereof — that a hardened Formosaphile might notice. The absence of any reference to the May 24 Incident of 1957, during which the US Embassy in Taipei was attacked, is one example. However, the general historicity of the narrative is commendable. Most importantly, the novel is seldom dull. As such, Lily Narcissus will be an engaging read for casual readers and those with knowledge of the nebulous nature of foreign service officialdom in postwar Taiwan. For all its grit and grime, its festering benjo ditches, sweat-drenched coolies and dog-snatching degenerates, Taipei is recalled with affection. As Lauren relays her family’s story — interlacing her narrative with extracts from her late mother’s letters — we discover that Taipei was about the closest thing to home the Norrells had.
—James Baron, Taipei Times
"Lily Narcissus is at once intimate family portrait and panoramic world history that tracks the disastrous consequences of America's involvement in Asia in the second half of the 20th century. With precision and restraint, Lerner illuminates some essential mystery at the heart of other people and our understanding of them. It's beautiful, wise, lucid, and disarming. I was seduced, then devastated."
—Andrew Palmer, author of The Bachelor
Lily Narcissus is an exceptional read, a beautifully written and well-crafted novel of personal dramas played out in a shadowy Cold War setting. This is literary fiction as it should be: intelligent, thought-provoking, and engrossing.
About Jonathan Lerner
Jonathan Lerner, born in 1948, grew up in Washington, D.C., with the exception of two years in the late fifties when his father, a Foreign Service officer, was posted to Taipei. That experience, and the journeys there and back which took his family literally around the world, primed a lifelong addiction to travel. It was also the germ for his new novel LILY NARCISSUS.
Lerner matriculated at Antioch College in 1965, but dropped out two years later and immersed himself in New Left activism, joining the staff of Students for a Democratic Society. His early writing experiences were producing SDS publications and contributing to other counterculture and "underground" newspapers. In 1969 he helped found the breakaway SDS faction the Weatherman. That became the clandestine and cult-like Weather Underground, which carried out a campaign of bombings. These experiences—and the challenges of being a young man struggling with his gay identity in a macho group culture—informed both Lerner's novel ALEX UNDERGROUND and his memoir SWORDS IN THE HANDS OF CHILDREN.
"When I stopped trying to be a full-time revolutionary, in the mid-seventies, I embraced my calling to be a full-time writer," Lerner says. His first novel, CAUGHT IN A STILL PLACE, was published in 1989. Meanwhile he had begun establishing what became a successful career as a magazine writer and editor. Early on he wrote mostly travel stories, typically with a design or historic preservation angle. Later he concentrated on topics including architecture, urban planning, and issues of natural resources and sustainability. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Metropolis, The Architect's Newspaper and numerous other publications. He has been a contributing editor at Landscape Architecture Magazine for the last decade.
During the eighties Lerner lived in various parts of Florida, and after that for 21 years in Atlanta. In 2011 he moved to New York's Hudson Valley, to live with Peter Frank, a philanthropist and community activist, whom he married in 2015.
