Writers and Lovers

Writers and Lovers is an incredibly moreish book – once you start to read, you just can’t stop. It has a spellbinding quality to it, even though the storyline isn’t 100% original. It’s just in the way the story is told.

The novel is about Casey, who is living in a shed trying to make ends meet as a waitress. Her passion is for writing, but she’s been working on the same novel for six years and it’s still not finished. Her relationship has crumbled and her mother has died unexpectedly. Casey is lost and barely hanging on emotionally and financially. Her solaces are small – with the friends she has left in town (the others having married and/or moved away) and the ducks that gather on the river. But things are slowly looking show more up and there are glimmers of hope. She meets Silas and things look promising until he disappears suddenly. He has things going on and at 31, Casey is weary of all the games. She’s falling apart physically (there is a ‘so-frustrating-it’s-amusing’ subplot on the absurdities of American health care) too but has to hang on to a job that’s becoming untenable for the health insurance. That’s when Oscar comes on to the scene. An older man and a writer to boot, he comes with baggage of a different sort – children (who are adorable), grief and experience. Suddenly Casey is caught between two men and things are starting to look up for her personally. Who should she choose?

What gradually comes to light as the novel progresses is that the story is not set in the days of mobile phones and internet. It’s set somewhere in the 1990s and Casey is reliant on two things for communication – her answering machine at home and getting messages at the restaurant where she works. It’s a nice little quirk for missed connections, waiting to speak to someone and just generally not being in contact 24/7. It also means that everyone is a lot more present and wanting to meet up in person – or even speak on the phone! Apart from this, the novel doesn’t seem dated by the setting. (If anything, it feels very fresh – the concepts might be familiar but the writing is superb).

Casey is a character with hidden depths. She’s a writer, and a frustrated one at that, feeling left behind by her peers almost like a fraud. She’s also hurting with the loss of her mother, which leads her to ask some questions at inappropriate times. She feels lost and adrift and this translates well to the page, especially when Casey is faced with conflict. There’s a great scene with her father in the restaurant that is both awkward and disgusting in equal measures. King is great at making the reader feel what Casey is going through. You can’t help but support her, even when she makes some silly decisions.

Writers and Lovers is a wonderful read with a great rhythm, almost mesmerising. I dare anyone to be able to put it down.

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Writers & Lovers feels like Lily King reached into my brain, pulled out some of my favorite things, some of my memories, wrapped them all up in her gorgeous prose and presented this amazing gift to me. Casey Peabody is 31, waits tables at a high-end restaurant in Cambridge while trying to finish the novel she’s been working on for six years. Casey has a lot of problems--debt collectors, a recently broken heart, some physical ailments and she is still grieving her mother’s sudden death the previous year. With all that, somehow King still manages to write a book full of funny and hopeful moments. The story falters at points (the end...ugh), but King’s writing wins the day with such simple yet incredibly thoughtful and emotional show more moments. (“I don’t write because I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.” Sigh.) Writers & Lovers hit me with a lot of personal connections--Boston, restaurants, books, writing--but kept me with everything it became. A definite TBR for readers of Emma Straub, David Nicholls, Meg Wolitzer, etc.

I received an ARC through Edelweiss+ show less

I just finished this purely masterful novel. The pacing, the sensitivity, the passions of the different characters, the gritty down-and-out quality of it, and the glorious ending lit up my heart. Books that touch me like this novel are exactly why I read, and they’re what I’m constantly searching for in novels of all forms and style.
It’s a very intelligent book, that’s set in 1997, and centered on writers, some who have found some success, and those who are struggling. Our main character, Casey Peabody, is 31 and rightly feels that life has been cruelly tossing her around for too many years.
While growing up, she had a troubled relationship with her father, who forced her into being a child golf prodigy. After taking on show more $75,000 in debts to get her M.F.A., she finds herself being constantly hounded by creditors. Her long love relationship ended, and her mother unexpectedly died during a trip in Chile. Casey was suffering, but doing her best to deal with it herself.
To most people Casey is a waitress at Iris, an upscale restaurant on Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Those who are closer to her know that she had been struggling to finish her manuscript, Love and the Revolution, for six years. As the story develops, she is involved with two men: Oscar, an older novelist of some stature, who’s raising two young boys himself; and Silas, a struggling writer much closer to her own age. She has a good relationship with Oscar’s boys, and Oscar is a sweet man who shows her real affection and offers her much in life. With Silas, there is a burning passion, but then he will be out of touch for days.
After a while, she finishes her manuscript—and with great excitement sends it out to publishers—only to start a bitter collection of rejection letters. Eventually she gets an agent and interest in her work starts to grow. Meanwhile, her waitressing career seems to end, she chooses between Oscar and Silas, and finds an interesting teaching job. That’s enough, I’m not going to reveal everything.
Casey’s passion for her writing is intense, and though her progress seemed difficult many times, completing and successfully revising her book is a wild mix of emotions. I loved how King writes about maneuvering the writing/publishing world. Write about writing and bookselling and you’re already halfway there to getting your in so many bookstores.
I love all the side stories and the full cast of characters. There is no tedious misdirection in the book, people appear, situations change, she doubts so much, and love/passion/companionship/lust possess and confuse her... often all at the very same time. King doesn’t combined all these elements using some tricky plot device, they all come at Casey, just in the way life comes at most of the rest of us.
I’ll leave you with author Elizabeth Strout’s spot on review of the book—“Gorgeous.” show less

Casey is having a hard time. She's saddled with student debt, living in a garage and working as a waitress as she tries to write. She's been working on her novel for six years and it's going badly. She's estranged from her father for very good reasons. Also, her mother died suddenly and then the guy she fell in love with at a writers' colony dumped her. She doesn't see things improving and she's dealing with a lot of anxiety.

So this sounds dreary, doesn't it? Except that Casey also has some good, supportive friends and her own resilience and humor to guide her along as she deals with mourning her mother and negotiating her way through her life. Lily King writes so gorgeously and with such immediacy in Writers and Lovers that I quickly show more forgot that I don't generally like novels about novelists -- it feels like an exercise in navel-gazing and how many novels about writers are there now? Except King's take is fresh and visceral and fun, while also being heartbreaking and fully committed to showing the precariousness of Casey's makeshift life.

I loved this novel. I loved how King had me inhabiting Casey's life and while that was rarely a comfortable place to be, it was intense. I loved the mocking/loving look at the writing life and at writers and the various ways they can be ridiculous. show less

I did not love King's last book, Euphoria, despite the critics' unanimous genuflection, and I hesitated to read this as a result. Stupid me. I LOVED this beyond all else. I am pretty sure novel of the year just got locked in. Talk about a great match between book and reader. This book is gorgeous. The writing is spectacular. One of the best first sentences I have read in ages may have been surpassed by one of the best closing lines in memory. I love a happy ending when you know you caught things when the light was just right, and the next moment could be lovely or cataclysmic or maybe just straight up ordinary, where the target of a year of security seems like an overshoot and that target's achievement makes us mostly forget (or maybe show more just not care) that the next year might be more insecure than what came before.

This is clearly a deeply autobiographical novel. I have read a few of those lately, and most have not knocked my socks off -- those writers should read this. Its just the most flawless celebration of the coming of age of a true romantic.

The concept of success has become so hidebound in the last couple of decades. When, based on his strengths and interests, I encouraged my son away from "practical" majors toward philosophy, economics, art, literature and history people looked at me like I was crazy. What is he going to DO with that, they said. Can he get a high-paying job? I answer (as a career expert working at an elite university) that I don't know if he will. He may well have to spend a little time in squalor first and may decide he is not interested in endless wealth, just in more basic comfort for himself and his family. If he does, it won't kill him. He knows in the long run a living of some sort is essential and he will make one. More importantly, he is going to master critical analysis and recognize beauty and longing and need and love and hate and all the the things that actually matter. After that he can figure out how to make a life and a living that works for him, not one based on other people's values. People think you are crazy or rich enough to be flighty when you say those things. I am neither, but I know that if you believe in yourself and the importance and worth of other people (even the "bad" ones), acknowledge your material wants and needs, and accept that those needs can sometimes be delayed, you can find a wonderful life. I believe in the essentiality of art and literature, I believe people are more empathic and humane when they can stand in front of a painting and recognize that it contains truth more profound than any statement of unassailable fact. I believe in what is essential, true love and insightful humor and intransigent grief and unremitting need and and transformational art. I believe all of those things are more important than being practical, and that worshipping a linear checklist approach to life destroys people's connection to joy. If you have possessions that "spark joy" you don't know what the hell joy is. If you find joy in your work, in playing with children, or in dancing like a madwoman at a concert surrounded by friends you know what you are doing. And I believe if you are not allowed to fail, you never ever get to succeed on your terms. You don't know what success is for you unless you open yourself up to failure and know you are willing to suffer its sting to make something happen. I like messy people. I know grief, anxiety and fear are good things that we need to find a way out of, not simply things to be dulled. This book is a celebration of everything I believe in. I loved every character; Casey, and Oscar (with John and Jasper),and Silas were sympathetic and funny and smart and good, as were the supporting characters, who are barely on the page but still people we come to know because King writes so stupendously well. When I read the last words in this book I said out loud to my empty room "oh my god, that was perfect." What more can I say? show less

This is about Casey, an aspiring novelist who works as a waitress in Boston. Her mother has recently died, so at the beginning of the novel she is consumed by grief and anxiety. The novel explores her relationships with a few potential lovers, both of whom are also writers.

King's writing is delightful. Despite how depressing Casey's situation is, and despite the fact that there isn't a lot of action in the book, the characters all feel so real that this book is hard to put down. The end was a little unsatisfying to me - it seemed a bit sudden and too tidy, but all in all, this is an enjoyable read about the power of friendship and love to heal wounds, and about the importance of the art of writing.

Such a wonderful book!

I don’t normally start reviews that way, but I didn’t want to leave you in suspense. Because you might start off this novel about an unsuccessful writer, or possibly an unsuccessful adult, and be thinking that it is that dreaded writer-writing-about-writing novel. Okay, it is that. But it’s so much more. Casey is in distress. The novel she’s been writing for six years is not yet finished. Her waitressing job that she took to make ends meet is not meeting its ends. The creditors of her student loans are sending threatening letters. And her love life — yes, mostly writers — has been a disaster. Her beloved mother’s death six months earlier has sent her into a complete tailspin. And she just keeps show more spinning. Of course in the midst of this yuckiness, wouldn’t you know it, she meets not one but two highly desirable guys (okay, they are both writers, but not all writers are assholes … probably) and, somewhat surprisingly, she has finished her novel and sent it off to a raft of literary agents.

What I liked so much about this novel was the very real voice of its protagonist. Life is messy and despite one’s talents (Casey was at one point destined to become a professional golfer — yeah, I know!) there is still what one longs for oneself. Writing is it, for her. Successful or unsuccessful, writing is the place she calls home. I get that. Also her sadness. Because life kinda sucks. Sometimes. And she misses her mom.

Beautifully written. Both moving and thoughtful. I heartily recommend it. show less