Introduction

The coast of Southern France sparkles in this sexy, mature, and engaging debut novel. Lily has come to southern France in search of a new perspective, hoping that the sun’s soft rays and the fragrant sea breezes will provide a relaxing respite from the demands of her lively daughter and her family’s Idaho cattle ranch. Two years after her husband’s sudden death, in the house that’s been in his family for generations, she finally finds some stolen weeks to make sense of the past. To Madame Olivetti—her cranky old manual typewriter—Lily entrusts all her secrets, pounding out the story of the men she loved, the betrayals she endured, the losses she still regrets. And with the companionship of Yves, the seductive handyman who comes by to make repairs, Lily comes closer to understanding her exhilarating past—and to discovering she has a new story to tell—one about the delights of starting over.

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Excerpt

Prologue
He comes to her in the evenings, after work. They make love and
then talk, she in English, he in French, while beyond the open windows
and doors of her bedroom the sky turns a lively pink, not unlike the color
that flushes her cheeks.
“What will your mother be making you for dessert tonight? Choco-?
late pots de crème?” she wonders. “Or something less sweet . . . Perhaps
a tart of quince and sour lemons?”
He grins, uncomprehending, a simple man who asks for nothing
more than the generosity of her body and the lazy postcoital murmur of
her voice speaking to him in a language he does not understand.
“I am feeding you my life,” she tells him. “In heaping spoonfuls.”
He groans, aroused and hungry, as if her words are a feast of exotic
dishes she has set before him.
Below them, in the village, in a neat stone house that overlooks the
sea, his mother is preparing dinner. She suspects that Yves is up the hill
with the American widow, but she cares only enough to punish him in
small ways: a bitter smile when he compliments her on the tarte au poire
she has made for his dessert; a hostile arm’s length between them when
she kisses the air, not his cheeks, to wish him good night.
It is seven p.m. when Yves turns his truck up the rutted gold-?dust
road to Lily’s house. It is eight thirty when he rumbles past the news
vendor’s shop, headed for home. The villagers watch but say nothing, for
Yves is one of their own. So, too, is Lily, and it is no one else’s business.
This is nothing new. There have been plenty of sexual goings-?on in La
Pierre Rouge, the house of the red stone, over the past century.
“You’ll be late,” Lily warns, this time in French.
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“I don’t care.”
She reminds him gently, “She is your mother. You live in her house.
You must think of her dignity.”
“I think of this.” He caresses her breast and the smooth inward slope
of her thigh. Sex for them is a healing unguent, liberally applied but
short term and, thus, light on the soul.
“Quickly then . . . ,” she says.
Twenty minutes later, rattling through town in his old Deux Che-?
vaux truck, Yves waves at the news vendor’s wife. Frowning, she points
at her watch. It is almost nine o’clock. For the first time in years he will
be late for dinner. The thought flits through Yves’s mind: the grumpi-?
ness of Madame Bibot must sour the flavor of her husband’s dinner. He
toots his horn to try to cheer her up, but he is thinking of Lily. He is
wondering what is the story of her life, unaware that he has heard every
word of it.
She has fed it to him, in English, in heaping spoonfuls.
xii Prologue
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One
L
ily Crisp was aware of the whispers that heralded her ar-
rival in the village, the eyes peeping out from behind half-
closed shutters and starched lace curtains. She trusted that the
whispers carried only kind feelings toward her and her family,
although, as she drove through the center of town, she noticed
the news vendor and his scowling wife locking up their shop
for the evening. Now there was a woman who shunned good-
will, Lily thought. Madame Bibot was probably remarking that
Madame Crisp looked unreasonably vibrant and healthy for a
widow. Monsieur Bibot, who had a wandering eye, though he
tended toward women more buxom and Germanic than Lily,
would doubtlessly have said something to enflame his wife,
some nonsense about Lily’s skin glistening with the sheen of
sorrow, which adds luster to a woman’s complexion. Or how
Lily and her husband had made a fine couple and, with their
two children, such a happy family. The fairy tale of familial hap-
piness no longer charmed Madame Bibot. In fact, glancing in
the rearview mirror, Lily saw that the news vendor’s wife was
glaring at her husband. Monsieur Bibot was gesturing boldly,
perhaps attempting to calm the waters by suggesting that grief
had certainly aged Lily Crisp. She must be . . . what? On the
near side of fifty?
“On the far side,” Madame would be replying tartly, and
Lily smiled because she knew that Madame’s assessment of Lily’s
age, and Lily’s assessment of Madame’s response, were both on
target.
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? ? Annie?Vanderbilt
Lily had visited the village most summers over the past twenty
years. At first she had come with her husband, Paul, and her son,
Pierre. Paul had seldom stayed more than a week—?he was busy
with his cows, gainful employment of which the villagers ap-
proved. This was something they could understand: livestock,
hard work, and commitments. His concern for his herd of cows
in a land called Idaho, reportedly filled with snakes and dried
bushes, balanced the polite awe in which they had always held
him, for he was a wealthy man, had inherited money, unlike his
mother, who had been born in the village, not a penny to her
name; but with that saucy beauty, who needed a fortune? She
had married one.
Lily remembered those early visits, spending a month at the
house that Paul had inherited, reading to Pierre under a plane
tree or walking down the hill to the beach with his hand clasped
in hers, building sand castles, splashing in the sea, setting up an
umbrella to protect her son’s fair skin from the burning rays,
then dragging their weary, salt-sticky bodies back up the hill to
shower in a dribble of rust-colored water. Pierre had been in
his teens when Lily had presented him with a baby sister. The
next summer there had been no shortage of raised eyebrows and
knowing smiles—?sixteen years and Paul Crisp, still busy between
the sheets, and potent!?—?when this beautiful child, with her star-
tling blue eyes and corn-silk hair, had turned up in the village.
Was it only two years ago, Lily mused, when the four of
them had been sitting on the beach in folding chairs and Justine,
aged seven then, had asked her father, “What’s the name of the
water out there, Daddy? What do you call it?”
“Lily’s Lily Pond,” he had told her.
“Lily’s Lily Pond,” she had chimed in with him, and, crawling
onto his lap, had squirmed into position with her back against
his chest, straddling his knees. He had wrapped her up in his
arms and set his chin on the top of her silky blond head, and the
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The?Secret?Papers?of?Madame?Olivetti? ? 
two of them—?one dark-haired, one light—?had gazed at the sea,
limpid and pale, bleached to the blue of the faded blue sky.
Justine had asked, “Is that because Mom floats her dreams
on it?”
“Absolutely. On blow-up hippos and walruses.”
“And dragons?”
“And elephants.”
“Do the dreams ever fall off—?like little girls?” she had said,
in a hushed voice.
“Never ever,” her father had assured her.
Lily had put down the book she was reading, smiled over at
them, and asked, “Shall we run down to the sea and float with
my dreams?”
“Oh, yes, Daddy, can we?” Justine had cried, and he had
scooped her up and carried her, squealing with delight, across
the sand, to where he sailed her back and forth, belly down and
arms extended, over the water. Justine had whooped and yelled
for her brother, Pierre, to come and see her, she was flying, she
was flying like an angel. . . .
Squinting through the windshield, Lily returned her thoughts
to her driving and swore softly as her rental car, its engine grind-
ing, lurched up the gold-dust road to her house. Midway up the
hill, the car stopped with a judder, then charged ahead in a great
jump and shuddered. “Don’t die on me,” she threatened, calling
down the wrath of the gods on this cursed Peugeot the color of
a turnip. It jolted forward, up and over a ledge that scraped the
oil pan. “Think light,” she urged as the vehicle swerved into the
driveway and halted abruptly. She cut the engine.
Relief washed over her, and, in the silence that followed, she
could almost hear the ebb and swirl of the profound exhaustion
that engulfed her limbs. Here at last she could sleep. Here at last
she could sort through her memories and write them down, let
in air and light and tidy the clutter of a scattered life.
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? ? Annie?Vanderbilt
Somewhere nearby a dog was barking. She glanced around
her. It was growing late, the sky’s mauve glow having faded into
blackness. Yet, the sun’s warmth lingered. Heat enfolded her
body as if she had been wrapped up in moist leaves and shunted
into an oven. The air trembled, garnering each whiff of moisture
that trailed up from the resting sea. She fanned her skin, cooling
the sweat that had rolled down her thighs, her shoulders, and
dampened her armpits. Not surprisingly, her temples throbbed.
She had drunk a full bottle of wine with dinner; it had gone
down like water, in great cooling gulps that, afterward, had made
her head spin and her mouth grow sticky.
Nighttime was when the sadness assailed her. The pall of loss
spread over her then, like a cloth dipped in ashes and smoothed
across her skin. She had felt smothered at first, as though if she
struggled the sorrow might do greater damage than slow the
beating of her heart or interrupt her dreams. But drinking with
grief as one’s sole companion was not a pastime she intended
to pursue; although it blunted the sadness, it brought down an
early curtain on the evenings, and there would be thirty-eight
evenings until her children’s visit. Self-imposed, she might add.
Her choice to come here, to the south of France, to La Pierre
Rouge, the old stone house on a hill above the sea that would
be her refuge.
For one moment, before hefting her luggage from the back-
seat of the car and carrying it to the house, Lily closed her eyes,
thought about Paul, and let the fragrant air of the Côte d’Azur
drift through her.
All night long the dog barked, fretful barks followed by a
precarious silence in which she heard the wind, its soft breath
hot as a lover’s kiss on the plane tree leaves beyond her window.
Hours after midnight, when she opened her eyes and the dark-
ness that embraced her was more sensuous even than the weight
of sleep, she remembered creeping into the shelter of Paul’s arms.
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The?Secret?Papers?of?Madame?Olivetti? ? 
She had never had far to creep, for he had liked to feel her near
him. Their bed was a narrow double, and Paul’s leg, thrust out
to the side, often pinned her ankles. She would nudge his thigh,
and, at her touch, he would sigh as if a forest maiden had entered
his dreams and laid a hand where he most wished she would.
His body would sometimes respond with a quick, hard thrust
into the mattress and she would laugh aloud. She laughed now
at the memory, so alive and tactile that she could almost feel the
mattress jiggle and the cozy, bearish heat of him.
Paul had died in Idaho, quickly, and with their son, Pierre,
unhurt beside him. Lily pictured the two men sitting quietly in
Paul’s truck, tired, driving back to the ranch in the cold Novem-
ber rain and listening to the radio. Men at ease in each other’s
company. Men with dark, curling, unkempt hair and thick black
eyebrows that met in the middle over strong French noses. There
were five ducks in the cooler behind the seat, “three greenheads
and a couple of teal,” she remembered the officer had said. They
had shot five ducks, only five, and were driving home to shower,
shave, and meet her for lunch. They were to celebrate her fifty-
first birthday.
Justine, almost eight then, was perched on the countertop be-
side her in the kitchen. She was cutting out cookie-dough fig-
ures, punching silver balls into the turkeys’ eyes and the pilgrims’
bellies. Lily was opening the letter that had been lying on the
kitchen table since the mail had been delivered earlier that morn-
ing. She had been saving it—?savoring the opening, the reading,
the learning about Monsieur Dupré’s wonderful stay in the old
stone house on the French Riviera. Another glorious Septem-
ber, she supposed. Another glamorous, unknown, unmentioned
companion whose dark perfume would linger in the sheets, and
whose black silk panties would lie forgotten under the red couch
or in a clump of lavender, leading her to speculate, once again,
about their renter. What books had he read this past September,
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? ? Annie?Vanderbilt
and which one would she find—?had he left for her—?on the long
wooden table? Which wines—?red or white? from Burgundy?
Bordeaux?—?had he drunk with his meals, and how many bottles
would there be—?his gift—?when she peeked next summer into
the stone-dark cave? Six, no doubt. Punctilious and dependable,
he always left six. Just as every July for the past eight years he had
sent a check in advance of his stay. Just as every November he had
written a thank-you note couched in superlatives.
Monsieur Dupré was their only renter.
She had just extracted his letter from the envelope when
the doorbell rang. “I’ll go, Mom,” Justine had said brightly as
she jumped down from the counter, where her gamin’s legs, in
shorts in November, had been swinging. The announcement of
death had come just that swiftly: Justine’s legs swinging and her
swinging blond hair as she hurried to the door, opened it, and
was asked by the officer, who would later mention the ducks in
the cooler, if her mother was in.
“Just a minute,” Justine had replied, her smile widening.
“She’s right behind me, and Daddy’ll be home soon. Did you
come for Mom’s birthday party?”
The policeman had taken off his hat and held it awkwardly
in both hands. “No, I didn’t,” he’d said.
Lily had come up behind her daughter and run her hand over
Justine’s silky hair, so pale it appeared white in an unexpected
shaft of sunlight that lanced through the open door. “Can I help
you?” she’d said, and then reading the discomfort in the man’s
eyes, had put her hands softly on her daughter’s shoulders and
urged her around. “Why don’t you run upstairs to my bedroom
and bring me my shawl?” she said. “It’s getting chilly.”
But Justine had crumpled, with the shake of a muffled sob,
against Lily’s stomach, and Lily, who had begun to shiver, looked
into the policeman’s eyes and mouthed Paul’s name over Jus-
tine’s head. The man nodded.
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The?Secret?Papers?of?Madame?Olivetti? ? 
“My son?” she said out loud.
“He’s fine.”
She had bitten into her lower lip to stop its trembling and
held her daughter close, and her face had turned into a steely
mask and her eyes had seemed sheeted in some black throbbing
substance that slowly closed out the light. Something between
a groan and a wail tore through her body, ripping her heart to
pieces without making a sound. She had stared at the officer
and Justine had snuffled, “Mom, what’s wrong? When’s Daddy
coming home?” And Lily had lifted her daughter’s delicate chin,
tilted it upward, and looked down into her sparkling blue, tear-
filled eyes. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she’d said. “Ev-
erything’s going to be all right, Justine. Everything’s going to be
all right.”
Lily crushed her knees against her chest and held on tight.
This was pointless, all this suffering. Why revisit that moment?
This was not why she had come here. This was not the story
she intended to write, how her husband of twenty-six years had
died after a modestly successful duck hunt, died instantly, at least
she had that, and in peace beside their son. Or how Pierre had
grabbed the wheel, grabbed it too late, and Paul, whose heart
had already stopped beating, had died a second death, his neck
broken, the truck smashed on the lava while the ducks in the
cooler, dead as Paul, had sustained no injury. As if dying once
were enough.
Impatient for sleep, for the night to end and the day to begin,
Lily closed her eyes. As always he was there, behind her eye-
lids, a smudge of recollection more heat and shimmer than an
actual man. She breathed in his chin, his mouth, his nose—?le?
nez —?Paul’s heroic, proud, improbable, quintessentially French
proboscis, and she smiled.
As she fell into sleep, the dog barked again.
16667.01 SecretPapersOfMadameOli7 7 7/10/08 1:41:10 PM
Two
S
eated at her desk, Lily shoved back the old portable Olivetti
typewriter she had brought with her from Idaho. A few
days had passed since the dog had kept her awake with its bark-
ing. Where was it now? Muzzled? Banished to the garage?
Locked in a closet? Or—?as she preferred to believe—?tucked
cozily under its owners’ duvet?
Her writing had gone smoothly. The sea was her confidante.
It smiled as the dawn raised a blush to its skin, a glass-calm sur-
face that suddenly, between the moment Lily looked down at
the page where she had been working and then up, sported a
series of wrinkles. How quickly the wind came up in the morn-
ings, as if pulled on a leash by the sun.
With more ease than she had expected, a routine was emerg-
ing. She wrote for an hour before it grew light, drank a small
cup of coffee, then jogged down the hill through the village and
along the beach, until she turned back to swim. There were few
people about so early in the morning: an old man sweeping the
streets; a merchant, yawning, bringing in boxes of peaches and
courgettes; lights glowing in the baker’s window; birds chitchat-
ting above the sidewalks, before the tourists and the heat drove
them into the oak woods and the oleander hedges. This was her
favorite time of day; she fetched warm croissants and a baguette
as she swung back through town, then trudged up the hill, ate a
leisurely breakfast, and continued to write.
From time to time she lost her concentration. The sea changed
its moods and coloration as often as a French coquette: now the
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The?Secret?Papers?of?Madame?Olivetti? ? 
sun slapped its cheeks with a brassy, gold-flecked rouge; now
scudding clouds lay melancholy bands across its forehead. The
ravishing sight of water and sky, so vibrant a blue against orange
tiled roofs and dusky green hillsides, offered her solace, pushed
her to forget. She was easily distracted, enthralled by the view.
“Madame!?” A man’s voice bellowing up at Lily startled her
out of her reverie. “Madame—?”
“Je?suis?ici.” I’m here, she called out. “Up here. I’m coming
right down.” She glanced quickly in the mirror, trying to pat her
billows of red hair into shape—?had she even bothered to comb
it that morning? When the writing and memories took hold
of her, she forgot to drink and eat, or brush her teeth. The day
before she had bundled her hair on top of her head and jabbed a
chopstick through it. That had worked nicely—?but now she saw
that she had dribbled coffee down the front of her shirt. What
an image of middle-aged disarray and neglect she presented!?
Hurrying onto the porch and leaning over the railing, she
caught sight of a large, rough-looking man wearing bright blue
work pants and a blue jacket. He smiled up at her from the ter-
race. “Madame Crisp?” he said.
“You must be Yves Lebrun. You have come to fix the roof
over the kitchen,” she replied in French, for she had been fore-
warned that beyond the standard classroom phrases—?good
morning, good-bye, and what is your name?—?he had mastered
no English. Moderating her pace to appear less harried, she de-
scended the staircase. “Monsieur?Lebrun?.?.?.?Enchantée?de?faire?votre?
connaissance.” Delighted to make your acquaintance, she said,
extending her hand.
Yves shook it. “Enchanté,?Madame.” Then, when he had let
go of her hand, he asked, “You are called Lily Crisp?”
“Yes, that is true.”
“Crisp. This is a name I have not heard before. It is different,
isn’t it?”
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10? ? Annie?Vanderbilt
“It’s British. My husband’s great-grandfather came from
England. It’s an old name.”
“Then you must have much history,” he said.
Oh, yes, Lily thought, I have too much history. That is pre-
cisely the problem. That is why I have come here. But she said
to Yves, “Don’t we all have history . . . ?”
He gave a small laugh, shrugged, and indicated the roof. “It
is time to begin my work,” he admitted, “before your kitchen
floats down to the sea when it rains. If it rains. I wonder . . . the
dryness, it is not good for the trees and the hills. And now”—?he
pointed at a distant hillside thick with its dusky canopy of cork
oaks—?“they will build a golf course on the mountainside. Over
there. Can you believe it? How will they keep the golf balls
from rolling into the sea? And where will they find enough
water for the grass?” Shaking his head and muttering to himself,
he turned and walked briskly—?not in the comfortable shamble
Lily had expected from so hefty and loquacious a handyman—?
to his truck to fetch his tools and a ladder.
She called out, “I’ll be upstairs in my room, writing, if you
have any questions.” She saw him raise his hand—?he had heard
her; and so she climbed back up the stairs, smiling inwardly as
she seated herself at the old chestnut table with cabriole legs that
she used as her desk. She reviewed their conversation. What was
it Yves had said? “Crisp—?it is different, isn’t it?”
Lily chuckled, recalling Esther, her outspoken older sister.
“For God’s sake, Lil, why did you marry Paul without telling
anybody? You barely know him!? And why change your name?
Lily Fern is a great name. Lily Crisp sounds like the star of a
pornographic movie. Or a cookie.”
P
Lily’s neighbors were in residence. This she knew from the
music that wafted up from the pink house with the lime green
shutters. She enjoyed the Telemann and the Mozart in the morn-
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The?Secret?Papers?of?Madame?Olivetti? ? 11
ings when she wrote, although not late at night when she had
gone to bed and the Belgian couple had just sat down to dinner.
The house was young and enchanting, as were its owners. From
her hillside perch, she could peer down upon them: the woman
listened to Debussy while reading in her garden; the man grew
tomatoes and aubergines, and had planted lemon, plum, and
fig trees on the sun-drenched slope between Lily’s house and
his. . . . Lily’s house. La Pierre Rouge. Her house. Not Paul’s.
Not his mother’s or his grandfather’s, but Lily’s. By a twist of
fate, which the villagers doubtlessly found amusing, this house
that was French down to the cold stone core of its bones now
belonged to an American, to a Midwesterner.
La Pierre Rouge was set high on a hillside, quite alone, up a
steep and narrow, winding dirt road that was deeply rutted. Dur-
ing his lifetime Paul’s grandfather must have kept the road open
manually with a pickax and shovel, filling the potholes and ruts
with gravel and chipping away at the crystalline bedrock that
projected into the broken track. Around the final bend, from the
forest of cork oaks and pines, the house rose up squarely, age-
scarred and handsome, built of rough-chiseled blocks of local
stone quarried from the hillsides. Shiny, black-painted shutters
flanked windows and doors that opened wide to let in the heady
fragrance of early-summer blooms and the delicate southern
light. Inside, the patina of dark wood set against the brilliant col-
ors of patterned cloth warmed the cold stone-walled interior.
There were huge wooden beams overhead, red tiled floors with
threadbare Persian carpets, and a crush of comfortably uphol-
stered peasant furniture, some of which, like the house itself, was
over a century old.
According to family legend, Georges Lafond had brought
his young Italian wife in a wooden cart, pulled by a plump and
frisky pony, to this rocky plot of ground, where he had built her
a house. She had carried with her in the cart a massive, squared-
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1? ? Annie?Vanderbilt
off chunk of red limestone from the village in the Dolomites
where she had been born and had lived until reaching puberty.
A bride of two weeks, she was fourteen years old and still sore
between her legs. Her husband, smitten with the ripeness of
her young buttocks and peach-scented breasts, had vowed to
set the block of red stone plumb over the center of the main
doorway, but she had said no, and had refused as well its sym-
metrical placement over or under a window, or midway across
the rugged, golden gray wall that faced the sea. “No marriage
is perfect, nor do I seek perfection,” she had told him, remem-
bering the muscular but by no means satisfying tussle in their
conjugal bed the first night of their union. The red stone must
be mortared willy-nilly into the wall so as not to show pride
before the eyes of God. Georges had obeyed her wish, and in
the course of a long and satisfactory marriage she had borne
him nine children, five of whom had survived into adulthood.
The oldest, Gérard, a stonemason like his father, when he died
at the age of ninety-one, had bequeathed the house of the red
stone—?La Pierre Rouge—?to Justine Lafond, his surviving child
and only daughter.
Upon Justine’s death, the house had passed to her son, Paul.
And now it was Lily’s, and as the dawn grew brighter and
Hayden’s trumpets tooted a fanfare of joyous greeting—?bonjour
to the birds and the cork oaks and the flotilla of clouds draped
softly, like jellyfish trailing streamers, and to Lily arrested in her
writing and reflecting on the proud-nosed clan who had built
this house—?she blessed her deceased mother-in-law, who had
never coveted jewels or fancy clothes but had believed in land.
The summer after her father died, Justine Lafond had returned
to France, having sailed away over forty years earlier. She had
ordered new plumbing, tile baths, a washing machine, double-
wide French doors opening onto the terrace, fans for the up-
stairs ceilings, and a new firm mattress in the master bedroom.
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The?Secret?Papers?of?Madame?Olivetti? ? 1
(The old one, which had folded together in the middle like a
fallen soufflé, she had given to the woman who beat the Persian
carpets and swept the floor.) She had also bought up the entire
hillside above, on either side of, and below La Pierre Rouge,
down to the narrow strip of rocky earth where the Belgian
couple would later plant their orchard. It was this buffer of land
that now provided Lily with the solitude and the setting, if not
the consummate silence, she required for her writing.
16667.01 SecretPapersOfMadameOli13 13 7/10/08 1:41:11 PM
conve rs ati on gui de
A CONVERSATION
WITH ANNIE VANDERBILT
Q.?This?is?your?first?novel.?What?inspired?it?in?particular?and?why?
did?you?wait?to?write?your?first?novel?in,?let?us?say,?the?second?half?of?
your?life?rather?than?the?first?
A. Actually, I wrote my first novel twenty-five years ago. In
1983, just after I finished it (or thought I had finished it—?in
retrospect, it was a first draft and needed many rewrites or
a quick trip to the shredder), I fell off a cliff. That accident
stopped my writing life cold; all my creative energies went
toward healing my foot and being able to walk again. Un-
fortunately (or fortunately), the only copy of the manuscript
burned up along with our house in 2005, so I won’t be doing
any of those revisions.
I then wrote a book, as yet unpublished, about bicycling
through Japan with my husband, Bill, interweaving our ad-
ventures on wheels with the tale of my fall from the cliff,
my survival and recovery. A good friend and freelance editor
worked with me on this book and it was through her criti-
cal eye and heart-stopping honesty (she never hesitated to
write Yuck, Trite, You?can?do?better, or This?makes?me?swoon) that
I honed my skills. When I was fifty-one (one year younger
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than Lily), I finished the Japan book and immediately began
writing The?Secret?Papers?of?Madame?Olivetti.
It took ten years. I was leading a three-part life at the time
and trying to achieve some sort of balance. I was writing a
novel because Lily Crisp just popped out on the page one day,
and then Paul and Victor and finally Yves and all the others,
and it gave me such pleasure to tell their story and spend time
with them. During those same years my sister and I were care-
giving an elderly aunt and my parents and seeing them, one
after the other, into death. And finally, I was trying to keep
some fun and spice in my marriage by joining my husband,
Bill, on some of the backcountry and overseas adventures we
have always enjoyed together. So I would be partway through
a draft of the book and then there would be a health-care
crisis with my mother or a monthlong expedition to some
mountain in Bolivia or jungle river in Honduras. By the time
I returned I would pick up the thread of plot and characters
and find that I had changed, that I had new insights from my
adventures or caregiving, so the book changed, too. It was
never a smooth, clean reentry; I moved backward before I
could move forward again. All this took time, none of which
I regret, because when you write a novel in your fifties, you
have more perspective on life (you hope) and can let the vo-
luptuous side of living and loving take center stage.
Q.?What?did?you?hope?to?achieve?in?writing?The Secret Papers of
Madame Olivetti?
A. When I began working on this book, I wanted to take the
readers’ senses and immerse them in the landscapes in which
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the story takes place: lakeside Wisconsin; a French village on
the Côte d’Azur; the rain forest in Chiapas, Mexico; the stark
Idaho hills. I saw the scenes, smelled them, and felt them,
and then tried to paint those sensations in words. Within this
framework I envisaged a plot that was densely layered, mov-
ing 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. Long-
term married love, romantic love, sexual love, parental and
sibling love, the loss of a loved one—?all these interest me and
went into the mix. I created Lily Crisp, a strong and yet vul-
nerable woman who would wind her way through this often
messy labyrinth of love and death and emerge, in her own
imperfect way, with a clearer understanding of the fragility
and resilience of human nature.
Q.?As?you?mentioned,?the?novel?has?several?distinct?settings.?Are?you?
as?well?traveled?as?your?knowledge?of?all?these?places?would?suggest??
Do?you?have?a?personal?connection?to?any?of?these?places?
A. Bill and I started going on adventures from the day we
were married. We began in the Peace Corps in India in 1968,
then backpacked to Everest Base Camp in Nepal in 1972
and managed after that to sandwich wilderness and overseas
adventures into our lives for the next thirty-five years.
I have a personal connection to all the places about which
I write. I grew up in Wisconsin and spent my summers in a
rustic two-room pine cabin that belonged to my aunt. Every
day I swam across the lake towing the canoe behind me so
no motorboats would run me down. And yes, our neighbor
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scattered her husband’s ashes in the lake and my sister and I
would snorkel the shoreline in a state of titillation and horror.
I’ve lived in Idaho for the past twenty-five years and know
the dry sagebrush hills and open-sky landscape from hiking
and biking the trails and back roads and waking up every
morning to that clear, high-altitude sunshine. As for France,
my husband and I have bicycled across the south of France
three times and, in 1980, lived for three months in an old
stone house overlooking the sea. The village and the warm
waters of the Mediterranean lay below us, through the cork
oaks. Finally, Mexico. We spent two winters living and work-
ing in Chiapas, in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Every month or
so we would drive to the rain forest and camp beside the hut
of a Lacandón friend. Often we have walked to the cascada,
slipped through the sheet of water, and stood with our backs
against the cool rock wall where Victor and Lily exchange
their first kiss. These are my experiences. But in The?Secret?
Papers?of?Madame?Olivetti most of the specifics and all of the
characters and what happens in these locations are imaginary.
I had great fodder for the mill and loved dragging aromas,
landscapes, birdcalls—?you name it, I dragged it—?out of my
memory.
Q.?The?typewriter?on?which?Lily?writes?her?memoirs?becomes?a?sort?
of?character?in?the?novel,?and?in?fact?the?novel?is?titled?after?her.?What?
inspired?Madame?Olivetti?
A. When I wrote my first book (the one that burned up in
the house fire), I typed part of it on an Olivetti Lettera 32
Portable that my mother sent to the house in France where I
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was writing at the time. It was laborious work, lots of thunk-
ing and clicking of the keys, lots of mistakes, lots of cut and
paste. But I became quite attached not only to the slow pro-
cess of creating on a typewriter but to the machine itself. It
had character and tooth. I lost my Olivetti in the fire, but it
was alive and well and sleeping in the closet all those years of
working on this book.
Q.?Why?is?the?cat?Alonso?in?the?story?
A. Alonso mirrors Lily. Both are sensual creatures who enjoy
their meals. Both fiercely guard their independence but love
deeply. Both relish their solitude but welcome company on
a selective basis. Both wander off and misbehave but have
gentle, loyal hearts. Plus—?any woman who can have a close
and satisfying relationship with a cat and a typewriter is the
kind of woman I would want to know and write about.
Q.?I?found?Lily?Crisp?to?be?a?complex?and?fascinating?woman—?and?
one?of?the?sexiest?female?protagonists?I’ve?come?across?in?some?time.?
She?is?very?much?a?physical?being,?completely?comfortable?in?her?
own?skin.?There?are?also?times?when?she?seems?fearless—?willing?to?
commit?herself?wholeheartedly?to?relationships?with?men?she?loves,?
even?when?she?hasn’t?known?them?for?very?long.?What?about?her?
particularly?interested?you—?or?is?she?based?on?you?
A. I certainly don’t have Lily’s bizarre way of dealing with
loss through self-violence of one sort or another, nor do I
see my life as a muddle. I would have told Paul the truth and
risked losing him rather than hold it all inside. Lily keeps her
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secrets. I wear my heart on my sleeve. But both of us savor
good food, believe in passion and romance in life, love to
travel, and can laugh at ourselves.
I wanted to write about a woman who was comfortable
with her sexuality, a naturally erotic but not neurotic being,
who could love deeply and was a good mother and wife,
sister and daughter, but who had a quirky, off-the-cuff, soli-
tary side to her. I love the complexities and contradictions in
people: hence, Lily’s combination of fearlessness and vulner-
ability, her ability to jump into experience, sexual or other-
wise, and then take responsibility for her misbehaviors and
misjudgments. I was interested in a woman who is earthy and
grounded but who makes mistakes and at times is her own
worst enemy. Yet with her lusty sense of humor, her recogni-
tion of her own inadequacies without whining about them,
and her ability to forgive both others and herself, she always
manages to get back on keel and sail onward.
Q.?In?her?early?fifties,?two?years?after?her?husband’s?death,?Lily?is?
taking?some?time?to?reassess?her?life.?In?your?experience,?do?most?
women?go?through?a?period?of?reassessment?at?some?point?in?their?
lives?
A. I think that most women, as well as most men, go through
periods of reassessment in their lives. Many of us require
time alone to do this, although most of us don’t have the
luxury of retiring to France with our typewriters (and a sexy,
empathetic handyman) for five weeks. Especially in our fif-
ties, when the future is still uphill but the downhill stretch
is alarmingly visible—?not over but on the horizon—?many
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of my friends and I have felt the need to step back and gain
perspective on our lives and priorities. Sometimes the only
way we can chart where we’re headed, or might choose to
head, is to take a look at where we’ve been, as Lily does in
typing out her memories and recounting them to Yves. It’s
so easy to zip along in life and suddenly, since time moves
exponentially faster with age, you’re not fifty but seventy and
you haven’t stopped once to ask, Who the hell am I, and is
this what I want to be doing? Do I still want to drag out the
same old whips and beat myself up because I made some
mistake or misspoke? Do I still want to keep my pleaser tag
lit up in neon and hanging around my neck? Do I still want
to say no, no, instead of ripping off my clothes and diving
naked into the water?
Q.?I’m?curious?about?your?reading?habits.?Do?you?find?the?time?to?
read??Have?you?ever?been?part?of?a?book?club?or?reading?group??Is?
there?a?list?of?books?that?you?feel?have?particularly?influenced?your?
life?or?helped?shape?you?as?a?writer?
A. I have always read voraciously. For me, reading is one of
life’s great pleasures, along with fine dark chocolate devoured
on a daily basis and walking on a beach or in the mountains
or even down the street and back. I have been in the same
book club, called Qui Legit, for the past fifteen years. We read
books that “have stood the test of time,” including classics as
well as recent novels. We allow gossip with soup before the
discussion begins but then try to keep to the book. Since we
have no leader, we each try to read critically and guide the
discussion into interesting channels. Over the years we have
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bonded in a very special way through discussing books. We
now have a shared memory of 180 books we have read and
talked about.
The books that have resonated for me are The?Lover by
Marguerite Duras, because of the lush, atmospheric landscape
laced with the eroticism of the love affair; The?Leopard by G.
di Lampedusa, because of the painterly sensual quality of his
writing; The?English?Patient by Michael Ondaatje, because of
the remarkable sense of place, both in the ruined villa and the
desert, and the intensity and poignancy of the love stories;
and Kalimantaan by C. S. Godshalk, because of the humid,
dripping, heated sensuous jungle atmosphere and the strange
turnings of love.
Sound familiar?
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... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. If each of our lives is a train on which we are riding and we are looking out the window at events as they pass by, we sometimes get stuck on the same window. Lily says to Paul when she suggests they move to Idaho,“Don’t you think it’s time the train moved on? For both of us?” In choosing to spend a summer in France and type out her memories, Lily has recognized that she is stuck on the window of grief and remorse. Discovering that Paul is Justine’s biological father obviously helps her to become “unstuck.” But what other experiences and discoveries help her to move on? How does Lily mend herself?

2. Lily is at ease with her own sexuality, evidenced in her movements, in her appreciation of the bread and produce of the village, in her love of the sea, in her love affair with Yves, which is short term and, thus, light on the soul. Her life has been largely defined by her physical/sensual responses. Do you feel any kinship with Lily in this regard? What traits do all of Lily’s men share? What separates Paul from the rest? Do you value or fantasize about any or all of these traits in a partner? What does Lily’s choice of men say about Lily? Do
you think that her sexuality is her undoing, or does it add to her strength and ability to roll with the punches?

3. Lily is very interested in the women in her family, and in her husband’s family, who have come before her. Why do you think the author has put Lily in the context of several generations of women’s romantic and sexual lives?

4.When Lily drives off in Paul’s truck to work through her disappointment after he has reneged on her birthday trip to Rome, Lily says to herself,“Welcome to the Club of Disappointment, and then count your blessings.” What does she mean by this? Is this a realistic and helpful concept for getting through the difficult times in any close relationship? Did it resonate in any way with your own experience of working through disappointment?

5. How does a woman forgive a sister who has married the man she loves, basically stealing him away from under her own sister’s nose? Many siblings would harbor resentments for the rest of their lives over such a betrayal. How does Lily manage to release her anger, forgive Phila, and continue loving her sister? Could you do the same?

6.Why does Paul choose not to confront Lily about her affair with Victor? Does he accept equal responsibility for the breakdown in their marriage? Does he recognize the severity and the consequences of that breakdown? What traits does Paul possess that allow him to deal with what he suspects or knows about Lily’s infidelity and Justine’s parentage?

7. Why doesn’t Lily tell Paul the truth about Victor and share her doubts about who fathered Justine? Clearly she has not moved through her guilt, although, after Justine’s birth, her family life and marriage are deeply satisfying. Would telling Paul the truth have been a healthier way to deal with the situation? Would you have told Paul what happened? Do you think he wanted to be told?

8.What is the glue that holds Lily and Paul together despite their obvious differences? How do their interests and personalities complement each other so that the marriage works? What insights does this provide into long-term relationships?

9. The author moves back and forth between present and past. What are some of the devices she uses to make these shifts in time flow smoothly? How does she ground the novel in the present, in a village in France, so that when Lily returns from her memories you know she is back in La Pierre Rouge? Which characters in the village, be they inanimate, animal, or human, did you most enjoy?

10. Is Yves simply a mender of broken roof tiles and hearts, or does he play a larger role in Lily’s story?

11. Annie Vanderbilt’s writing has been called evocative and lyrical. Are there specific sentences or passages in the book that drew you into an exotic setting, be it a landscape, a meal, or a romantic encounter, so that you could see and smell, touch and feel Lily’s surroundings and experiences? Are there lyrical passages that beg to be read out loud?


12. Often what you remember after reading a novel is not the details but the universal truths and revelations that relate to your own life. What are the themes in this novel that resonate for you? Are there specific passages that, when you read them, made you pause and think, I’ve been there, or, that is so true?

13. In Qui Legit, the book club to which the author belongs, she has fallen into the role of reading the last sentence or paragraph of the chosen novel out loud and giving her opinion on why she thinks it’s a good ending or a fizzle, a fabulous or a weak last line. If she is not at the meeting, one of the other Qui Legit members reads the last sentence and then they discuss what Annie would have said about the ending. What do you think about the ending and the last sentence of this novel?

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