Writers & Lovers
A Novel
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4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
#ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today
Emma Roberts Belletrist Book Club Pick
A New York Times Book Review’s Group Text Selection
"I loved this book not just from the first chapter or the first page but from the first paragraph... The voice is just so honest and riveting and insightful about creativity and life." —Curtis Sittenfeld
An extraordinary new novel of art, love, and ambition from Lily King, the New York Times bestselling author of Euphoria
Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with another instant New York Times bestseller: an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.
Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.
Writers & Lovers follows Casey—a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist—in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Thirtysomething writer Casey Peabody is anxious, brilliant, and very stuck. Caught off guard by her mother’s death, snowed under by student loan debt, and immobilized by writer’s block, Casey faces a series of decisions about her personal and professional direction that will shape the rest of her life. We loved novelist Lily King’s relatable heroine, who hides her pain and vulnerability behind a sharp wit. King has crafted a world that feels so viscerally real, it’s easy to imagine Casey stepping off the page. Writers & Lovers is a spellbinding and achingly beautiful novel about the sustaining power of creativity, about the paths we choose to follow and those we leave unexplored.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
King's, elegant, droll follow-up to Euphoria traces an aspiring novelist's effort to find herself after turning 30 and losing her mother. After a series of lovers and moves, Casey Peabody ends up alone in Boston, Mass., with nothing to hold onto. Her commitment to writing each morning keeps her at a dead-end waitressing job that barely covers her grungy rented room and the minimum payments for the massive debt she incurred for her undergraduate and graduate degrees. Her devastating grief for her mother, whose unexplained death occurred while vacationing abroad, can only be assuaged, she feels, by finishing the novel she's been working on for six years ("I don't write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don't, everything feels even worse"). She begins dating the successful writer Oscar Kolton, as well as one of his students, and finds new inspiration in the romances ("Usually a man in my life slows my work down, but it turns out two men give me fresh energy"). Facing the impending loss of her apartment, she fears that living with one of her lovers would expose her "blighted" dysfunction. While King's resolutions of Casey's financial, emotional, and creative challenges don't feel uniformly convincing, the nimble, astute narration appeals. This meditation on the passing of youth is touching and ruefully funny.
Customer Reviews
Excellent
Absolutely loved this book! Never read anything by this author and now I want to read everything! Loved the characters and connections and Oscar’s kids!
I wanted to like this more…but death death death!!
I really wanted to like this book but it seems to me that Lily King believes that adulthood is a graveyard. I mean my goodness why does EVERY SINGLE person Casey comes across have a very close relative/person who has died?! It’s like Lily thinks that trauma can only be tied to death. It flattens the human experience and some point while reading I just started keeping count of how many dead bodies have been discussed. It became a distraction and death lost its meaning. I literally spent the book being like well I wonder if we will get a dead father? Perhaps a dead bestie? Disappointing because I think this book could have been something much more interesting.
An Intimate Conversation
Lily King writes in way that feels like a conversation with a good friend. Sharing intimate thoughts and feelings as the main character takes you along with her life experiences. It’s a beautifully well-written ride. Casey is an easily relatable character to know and love.