Writers & Lovers: A Novel

By Lily King

#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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Release date: Mar 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9780802148551

Lily King

Lily King is the author of the novels The Pleasing Hour, The English Teacher, Father of the Rain, Writers & Lovers and Euphoria, which is inspired by the life of revolutionary anthropologist Margaret Mead. King is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and has twice won both the Maine Fiction Award and the New England Book Award. She lives with her husband and children in Maine.

Book preview

Writers

& Lovers

Also by Lily King

The English Teacher

The Pleasing Hour

Father of the Rain

Euphoria

Writers

& Lovers

A NOVEL

Lily King

Grove Press

New York

Copyright © 2020 by Lily King

Worms, Eggs, Sperm, and Other Thoughts on Writing © 2021 by Lily King

Geese illustrations by Calla King-Clements

Cover design by Kelly Winton

Cover artwork by Paul Wonner

Dutch Still Life with Lemon Tart and Engagement Calendar, 1979.

Collection SFMOMA, Charles H. Land Family Foundation Fund © Estate ofPaul Wonner and William Theophilus Brown, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [e-mail].

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: March 2020

First Grove Atlantic paperback edition: February 2021

This book was set in 11.5-pt. Bembo by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH

ISBN 978-0-8021-4854-4

eISBN 978-0-8021-4855-1

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

For my sister, Lisa, with love and gratitude

I have a pact with myself not to think about money in the morning. I’m like a teenager trying not to think about sex. But I’m also trying not to think about sex. Or Luke. Or death. Which means not thinking about my mother, who died on vacation last winter. There are so many things I can’t think about in order to write in the morning.

Adam, my landlord, watches me walk his dog. He leans against his Benz in a suit and sparkling shoes as I come back up the driveway. He’s needy in the morning. Everyone is, I suppose. He enjoys his contrast to me in my sweats and untamed hair.

When the dog and I are closer he says, ‘You’re up early.’

I’m always up early. ‘So are you.’

‘Meeting with the judge at the courthouse at seven sharp.’

Admire me. Admire me. Admire judge and courthouse and seven sharp.

‘Somebody’s gotta do it.’ I don’t like myself around Adam. I don’t think he wants me to. I let the dog yank me a few steps past him toward a squirrel squeezing through some slats at the side of his big house.

‘So,’ he says, unwilling to let me get too far away. ‘How’s the novel?’ He says it like I made the word up myself. He’s still leaning against his car and turning only his head in my direction, as if he likes his pose too much to undo it.

‘It’s all right.’ The bees in my chest stir. A few creep down the inside of my arm. One conversation can destroy my whole morning. ‘I’ve got to get back to it. Short day. Working a double.’

I pull the dog up Adam’s back porch, unhook the leash, nudge him through the door, and drop quickly back down the steps.

‘How many pages you got now?’

‘Couple of hundred, maybe.’ I don’t stop moving. I’m halfway to my room at the side of his garage.

‘You know,’ he says, pushing himself off his car, waiting for my full attention. ‘I just find it extraordinary that you think you have something to say.’

I sit at my desk and stare at the sentences I wrote before walking the dog. I don’t remember them. I don’t remember putting them down. I’m so tired. I look at the green digits on the clock radio. Less than three hours before I have to dress for my lunch shift.

Adam went to college with my older brother, Caleb—in fact, I think Caleb was a little in love with him back then—and for this he gives me a break in the rent. He shaves off a bit more for walking his dog in the morning. The room used to be a potting shed and still has a loam and rotting leaves smell. There’s just enough space for a twin mattress, desk and chair, and hot plate, and toaster oven in the bathroom. I set the kettle back on the burner for another cup of black tea.

I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.

At nine thirty I get up from the chair and scrub at the sirloin and blackberry stains on my white pleated shirt, iron it dry on the desk, slip it on a hanger, and thread the hook of the hanger through the loop at the top of my backpack. I put on my black work pants and a T-shirt, pull my hair into a ponytail, and slide on the backpack.

I wheel my bike out of the garage backward. It barely fits because of all the crap Adam has in here: old strollers, high chairs, bouncy seats, mattresses, bureaus, skis, skateboards, beach chairs, tiki torches, foosball. His ex-wife’s red minivan takes up the rest of the space. She left it behind along with everything else except the kids when she moved to Hawaii last year.

‘A good car go to waste like that,’ the cleaning lady said one day when she was looking for a hose. Her name is Oli, she’s from Trinidad, and she saves things like the plastic scoops from laundry detergent boxes to send back home. That garage makes Oli crazy.

I ride down Carlton Street, run the red at Beacon, and head up to Comm. Ave. Traffic thunders past. I slide forward, off the bike seat, and wait with a growing pileup of students for the light to change. A few of them admire my ride. It’s an old banana bike I found at a dump in Rhode Island in May. Luke and I fixed it up, put on a new greased-up chain, tightened the brake cables, and shimmied the rusty seat shaft until it slid up to my height. The gearshift is built into the cross bar, which makes it feel more powerful than it is, as if there’s a secret engine somewhere. I like the whole motorcycle feel of it, with the raised vertical handlebars and the long, quilted seat and the tall bar in back I lean against while coasting. I didn’t have a banana bike as a kid, but my best friend did and we used to swap bikes for days at a time. These BU students, they’re too young to have ridden a banana bike. It’s strange, to not be the youngest kind of adult anymore. I’m thirty-one now, and my mother is dead.

The light changes, and I get back on the seat, cross the six lanes of Comm. Ave. and pump up and over the BU Bridge to the Cambridge side of the Charles River. Sometimes I don’t make it to the bridge before cracking. Sometimes it starts on the bridge. But today I’m okay. Today I’m holding it together. I glide down onto the sidewalk on the water side of Memorial Drive. It’s high summer, and the river seems tired. Along its banks a frothy white scum pushes against the reeds. It looks like the white gunk that collected in the corners of Paco’s mother’s mouth by the end of a long day of her incessant complaining in the kitchen. At least I don’t live there anymore. Even Adam’s potting shed is better than that apartment outside Barcelona. I cross at River Street and Western Ave. and veer off the concrete onto the dirt path that runs close to the river’s edge. I’m all right. I’m still all right, until I see the geese.

They’re in their spot near the base of the footbridge, twenty maybe thirty of them, fussing about, torquing their necks and thrusting their beaks into their own feathers or the feathers of others or at the few remaining tufts of grass in the dirt. Their sounds grow louder as I get closer, grunts and mutterings and indignant squawks. They’re used to interruptions on their path and move as little as possible to get out of my way, some pretending to nip at my ankles as I pedal through, a few letting their butt feathers swish through my spokes. Only the hysterical ones bolt for the water, shrieking as if under attack.

I love these geese. They make my chest tight and full and help me believe that things will be all right again, that I will pass through this time as I have passed through other times, that the vast and threatening blank ahead of me is a mere specter, that life is lighter and more playful than I’m giving it credit for. But right on the heels of that feeling, that suspicion that all is not yet lost, comes the urge to tell my mother, tell her that I am okay today, that I have felt something close to happiness, that I might still be capable of feeling happy. She will want to know that. But I can’t tell her. That’s the wall I always slam into on a good morning like this. My mother will be worrying about me, and I can’t tell her that I’m okay.

The geese don’t care that I’m crying again. They’re used to it. They chortle and squall and cover up the sounds I make. A runner approaches and veers up off the path, sensing I don’t see her. The geese thin out by the big boathouse. At the Larz Anderson Bridge, I turn right, up JFK toward Harvard Square.

It’s a purging of sorts, that ride, and usually lasts me a few hours.

Iris is on the third floor of a building owned by a Harvard social club, which began renting out the space a decade ago to pay off nearly a hundred thousand dollars in back taxes. There aren’t many students around in the summer, and they have a separate entrance on the other side of the big brick mansion, but I hear a few of them rehearsing sometimes. They have their own theater where they put on plays in which men dress up as women and their own a cappella group that flashes in and out of the building wearing tuxes day and night.

I lock my bike to the metal post of a parking sign and climb the granite steps and open the big door. Tony, one of the headwaiters, is already halfway up the first flight, his dry cleaning draped over his arm. He gets all the good shifts, so he can afford to have his uniform professionally cleaned. It’s a grand staircase, covered with a greasy beer-stained carpet that must have once been a plush crimson. I let Tony reach the top and circle around to the next set of stairs before I start up. I pass the portraits of the presidents who have been members of the club: Adams, Adams, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, and Kennedy. The second flight is narrower. Tony is moving slowly, still only halfway up. I slow even more. The light from the top of the stairs disappears. Gory is coming down.

‘Tony, my man,’ he shouts. ‘How’s it hanging?’

‘Long, loose, and full of juice.’

Gory cackles. The staircase shakes as he comes toward me.

‘You’re late, girl.’

I’m not. It’s what he says to women instead of a greeting. I don’t think he knows my name.

I feel the stair I’m on sink when he passes me.

‘Busy night ahead. One eighty-eight on the books,’ he says over his shoulder. Does he think it’s the afternoon already? ‘And the on-call just called in sick.’

The on-call is Harry, my only friend at Iris. He isn’t sick, though. He’s on his way to Provincetown with the new busboy.

‘Strap on your long iron,’ he says.

‘Never leave home without it,’ I say.

Somehow in my interview he wheedled the golf stuff out of me. He plays croquet, it turned out. Not at garden parties but professionally, competitively. He’s supposedly one of the best croquet players in the country. He opened Iris after a big win.

Below me, he sniffs loudly three times, hacks it up, swallows, gasps, and goes out into the street with all the cash from last night in a pouch with CAMBRIDGE SAVINGS BANK in big letters. Someone has pressed a Post-it to his back that says: ‘Mug Me.’

‘Casey fucking Kasem,’ Dana says when I get to the top of the stairs. ‘No one’s fired you yet?’ She’s bent over Fabiana’s hostess podium, making the seating chart. It’s barely legible and guaranteed to be unfair.

I go down the hall to the bathroom and change into my white shirt and wrangle my hair into the required high tight bun. It makes my head hurt. When I come back, Dana and Tony are moving the tables around, putting the large parties in their sections, making sure everything is to their advantage, the big tables, the regulars, the restaurant’s investors who don’t pay but tip astronomically. I don’t know if they’re friends outside of the building, but they work every shift together like a pair of evil skaters, setting each other up for another dastardly deed, then preening around the room when it comes off. They definitely aren’t lovers. Dana doesn’t like to be touched—she practically broke the new busboy’s arm when she said she had a crick and he reached up to knead her neck with his thumb—and Tony never stops talking about his girlfriend, though he paws at all the male waiters through every shift. They have Gory and Marcus, the manager, completely snowed or at least compromised. Harry and I suspect it’s the drugs that come through Tony’s brother, a dealer who is in and out of jail and who Tony talks about only when he’s wasted, demanding vows of silence as if he’s never told you before. We call Dana and Tony the Twisted Sister and try to stay out of their path.

‘You’ve just taken two tables out of my section,’ Yasmin says.

‘We have two eight-tops,’ Tony says.

‘Well use your own bloody tables. These are mine, you fucks.’ Yasmin was born in Eritrea and raised in Delaware, but she’s read a lot of Martin Amis and Roddy Doyle. Unfortunately she doesn’t stand a chance against the Twisted Sister.

Before I can band with Yasmin, Dana points a finger at me. ‘Go get the flowers, Casey Kasem.’

She and Tony are the headwaiters. You have to do what they say.

Lunch is amateur hour. Lunch is for the new hires and the old workhorses working doubles, working as many hours as management will give them. I’ve waited tables since I was eighteen, so I went from new server to workhorse in six weeks. The money at lunch is crap compared to dinner unless you get a group of lawyers or biotech goons celebrating something with rounds of martinis that loosen the bills from their wallets. The dining room is filled with sunlight, which feels unnatural and changes all the colors. I prefer dusk and the windows slowly blackening, the soft orange light from the gilt sconces that masks the grease stains on the tablecloths and the calcium spots we might have missed on the wineglasses. At lunch we squint in the blue daylight. Customers ask for coffee as soon as they sit down. You can actually hear the music Mia, the lunch bartender, is playing. It’s usually Dave Matthews. Mia is obsessed with Dave Matthews. Gory is often sober and Marcus is mellow, doing whatever he does in his office and leaving us alone. Everything at lunch is backward.

But it’s fast. I get slammed with three deuces and a five-top before the clock in Harvard Yard strikes noon. There isn’t time for thought. You are like a tennis ball knocked from the front of the house to the back over and over until your tables are gone and it’s over and you’re sitting at a calculator adding up your credit card gratuities and tipping out the bartender and the bussers. The door is locked again, Mia is blasting ‘Crash Into Me,’ and after all the tables are broken down, glasses polished, and silverware rolled for tomorrow’s lunch, you have an hour in the Square before you clock back in for dinner.

I go to my bank next to the Coop. There’s a line. Only one teller. LINCOLN LUGG, the brass plate reads. My stepbrothers used to call poop Lincoln Logs. The youngest one used to pull me into the bathroom to show me how long he could make them. Sometimes we all went in there to look. If I ever see a therapist to talk about my childhood and the therapist asks me to remember a happy moment with my father and Ann, I’ll talk about the time we all gathered round to gaze at one of Charlie’s abnormally large Lincoln Logs.

Lincoln Lugg doesn’t like my expression of amusement when I step up to the counter. Some people are like that. They think anyone’s amusement must be at their expense.

I put my wad of cash in front of him. He doesn’t like that, either. You’d think tellers could be happy for you, especially after you’d graduated to dinner shifts and doubles and had $661 to put in your account.

‘You can use the ATM for deposits, you know,’ he says, picking up the money by the tips of his fingers. He doesn’t enjoy touching money? Who doesn’t enjoy touching money?

‘I know, but it’s cash and I just—’

‘No one is going to steal the cash once it’s inside the machine.’

‘I just want to make sure it goes into my account and not someone else’s.’

‘We have a strictly regulated systemized protocol. And it’s all recorded on videotape. This, what you are doing right here, is much less secure.’

‘I’m just happy to be depositing this money. Please don’t rain on my picnic. This money is not even going to be able to take a short nap before it is sucked out by federal loan sharks, so just let me enjoy it, okay?’

Lincoln Lugg is counting my money with his lips and does not respond.

I’m in debt. I’m in so much debt that even if Marcus gave me every lunch and dinner shift he had, I could not get out from under it. My loans for college and grad school all went into default when I was in Spain, and when I came back I learned that the penalties, fees, and collection costs had nearly doubled the original amount I owed. All I can do now is manage it, pay the minimums until—and this is the thing—until what? Until when? There’s no answer. That’s part of my looming blank specter.

After my encounter with Lincoln Lugg, I weep on a bench outside the Unitarian church. I do it somewhat discreetly, without noise, but I can no longer stop tears from drizzling down my face when the mood strikes.

I walk to Salvatore’s Foreign Books on Mount Auburn Street. I worked there six years ago, in 1991. After Paris and before Pennsylvania and Albuquerque and Oregon and Spain and Rhode Island. Before Luke. Before my mother went to Chile with four friends and was the one who didn’t come back.

The store seems different. Cleaner. The stacks have been rearranged and they’ve put the register where Ancient Languages used to be, but it’s the same in back where Maria and I used to hang out. I was hired as Maria’s assistant in French literature. I’d just moved back from France that fall and had this idea that even though Maria was American we’d be speaking French the whole time, speaking about Proust and Céline and Duras, who was so popular then, but instead we spoke in English, mostly about sex, which I suppose was French in its way. All I remembered now from eight months of conversation with her is a dream she had about Kitty, her cat, going down on her. Her rough tongue felt so good, she’d said, but the cat kept getting distracted. She’d lick a bit then move on to her paw, and Maria woke herself up screaming, ‘Focus, Kitty, focus!’

But Maria isn’t in back. None of them are, not even Manfred the cynical East German who went into a rage when people asked for Günter Grass, because Günter Grass had been in strong opposition to reunification. We’ve all been replaced by children: a boy in a baseball cap and a girl with hair to her thighs. Because it’s Friday at three, they’re drinking beers, Heinekens, just like we used to do.

Gabriel comes out from storage with another round. He looks the same: silver curls, torso too long for his legs. I had a crush on him. He was so smart, loved his books, dealt with all the foreign publishers on the phone in their own language. He had a dark, dry humor. He’s handing out the bottles. He says something under his breath, and they all laugh. The girl with the hair is looking at him the way I used to.

I wasn’t broke when I worked at Salvatore’s. Or at least I didn’t think I was. My debts were much smaller and Sallie Mae and EdFund and Collection Technology and Citibank and Chase weren’t hassling me yet. I sublet a room in a house on Chauncy Street with friends, eighty dollars a month. We were all trying to be writers, with jobs that got us by. Nia and Abby were working on novels, I was writing stories, and Russell was a poet. Of all of us, I would have bet that Russell would stick with it the longest. Rigid and disciplined, he got up at four thirty every morning, wrote until seven, and ran five miles before he went to work at Widener Library. But he was the first to surrender and go to law school. He’s a tax attorney in Tampa now. Abby was next. Her aunt convinced her to take a realtor’s exam, just on a lark. Later she tried to tell me she was still using her imagination when she walked through the houses and invented a new life for her clients. I saw her last month outside an enormous house with white columns in Brookline. She was leaning into the driver’s window of a black SUV in the driveway and nodding profusely. Nia met a Milton scholar with excellent posture and a trust fund, who handed her novel back after reading fifteen pages, saying first-person female narratives grated on him. She chucked it in the dumpster, married him, and moved to Houston when he got a job at Rice.

I didn’t get it. I didn’t get any of them then. One by one they gave up, moved out, and got replaced by engineers from MIT. A guy with a ponytail and a Spanish accent came into Salvatore’s looking for Barthes’s Sur Racine. We spoke in French. He said he hated English. His French was better than mine—his father was from Algiers. He made me a Catalan fish stew in his room in Central Square. When he kissed me he smelled like Europe. His fellowship ended, and he went home to Barcelona. I went to an MFA program in Pennsylvania, and we wrote each other love letters until I started dating the funny guy in workshop who wrote gloomy two-page stories set in New Hampshire mill towns. After we broke up, I moved to Albuquerque for a while, then ended up in Bend, Oregon, with Caleb and his boyfriend, Phil. A letter from Paco found me there, and we resumed our correspondence. Enclosed in his fifth letter to me was a one-way ticket to Barcelona.

I poke around in the Ancient Greek section. That’s the next language I want to learn. Around the corner, in Italian, the only other customer sits cross-legged on the floor with a small boy, reading him Cuore. Her voice is low and beautiful. I started speaking a little Italian in Barcelona with my friend Giulia. I come to the long wall of French literature, divided by publishers: rows of red-on-ivory Gallimards, blue-on-white Éditions de Minuit, dime-store-like Livres de Poche, and then the extravagant Pléiades, set apart in their own

Reviews for Writers & Lovers

[proustitute_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sublime.

Try beating this one. Just try.

[rglossne · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

At 31 years old, Casey Peabody is mourning the unexpected death of her mother, and recovering from a bad breakup. She is waiting tables in Harvard Square and working on finishing a novel she's been writing for six years. She is broke, in debt, and living in a moldy room next to a garage owned by a friend of her brother. In spite of all this, she is determined to hang on to her dream of living a creative life. She falls in love with two very different men, finishes her novel, and must navigate crises in all aspects of her life. I listened to this and loved it.

[bruyere_c · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Brilliant and true.

[maryreinert · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Loved "Euphoria" by this author, but this left me completely cold. A single young woman in her 30's is trying to become a writer. She is currently a waitress living in a small rented apartment of a friend of her brother. Really nothing much happens in this book except her internal angst about trying to find herself. None of the characters are particularly likeable and i just could not get into it. Would not have finished except book club selection.

[joecanas_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Dull. And. Pointless. Bloated novella, or journal entries awaiting serious editing? Especially disappointing after the amazing Euphoria.

[midwestms · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent look at grief and the struggle to maintain the will to create in the face of seemingly constant failure.

[kenkarpay · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great writing. Surprisingly engaging story about a struggling writer.

[cherybear · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Thirty-something Casey has lots of debt, works as a waitress, drifts in and out of love affairs, and is trying to finish writing her novel. I felt like I could identify with her. Things seem to wrap up a little too neatly, but it's a good read.

[angelalam-300700 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I gobbled up this book in 4 days.

[maydacat_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Casey is a writer, so, of course, to earn a living, she is also a waitress. She has yet to finish her first novel, although she will, eventually. Meanwhile, she is suffering from the adult angst of hoping to sell her first novel, as soon as she finishes it. She is grieving the loss of her mother who died in somewhat unusual circumstances. She has a difficult time in establishing meaningful and long lasting relationships. She is overwhelmingly in debt and always broke. And that is pretty much her story, and as well as the story of the novel. I just couldn’t connect with the characters, didn’t feel like there was much of a plot, and couldn’t get interested in novel. Still, it got rave reviews and great ratings from other readers. I just don’t see it. Maybe the main character’s lack of being responsible, the gratuitous profanity, and unneeded sexual references blocked my enjoyment of the novel.

[janismack · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Casey is at a crossroads in her life and is trying her best to survive. Many events in the last year has upended her world and now she must deal with it. The writers brings you right into to Casey’s world, you feel like Casey sometimes. The author keeps you engaged throughout the whole story.

[shannonrose4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Following the sudden death of her mother, Casey finds herself in Massachusetts.
She dedicates her mornings to working on her novel that has been in the works for six years. The restaurant shifts allow her to remain distracted enough that she doesn't have to focus on the loss of her mother and inspires her writing. One day, a well-known author is seated in her section and Casey quickly finds herself in love with two different authors, and on the edge of a big break that she may not be able to handle.
This fast-paced novel is full of heart and humor, I couldn't put it down.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Casey is a struggling writer living in her brother's friends garage and waiting tables so that she can write. After six years she finally finished her novel. Now will anyone buy it? While she waits for the verdict she deals with grief over her mother's sudden death in the previous year, giant student load debts, indecision in love, and a breast lump. Happy ending, but the middle part is sure depressing.

[ansate · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

this feels mean, but - it made me feel things, it made me cry, but I didn't really enjoy the experience. Excellent job getting me into a sad woman's headspace.

[hairball_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Unexpectedly wonderful. Everything about the description made it sound like it would be painful, but instead I couldn’t stop reading.

[booklove2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A lovely enough escape to a writer's/waitress's problems in 1990's Boston.  A lot of disjointed thinking which can sometimes be fun in a book, lots of randomness thrown together, but not enough to really stick with me in the long run here.  I'm also not usually invested in plots where a character has to choose between two lame boyfriends.  I did like that Casey kept trucking with all her various problems and it took her therapist to say "This is not nothing" for her to see how much she was going through.  Casey is a trooper.  The ending is also a bit too tidy, though some of Casey's many problems would have had to work out eventually.   I wish the book were more 90s!  

[bobbieharv · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was so happy to see that my library had the kindle book available for borrowing, because I've read and loved all of King's books (except for The English Teacher). This was another 5 star. Beautifully written, in a wonderful authentic voice that made it seem like a memoir. Three relationships, waitressing while trying to write and be with her lovers, and a happy ending that was a little to pat but still - just a wonderful book.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

King has a real talent for writing sentences and at times slips into the poetic in a very beguiling way. "I want to take that sound and stuff it into a bag with rocks and throw it in the river." Her narrator is struggling with oppressive debt, getting dumped, the death of her mother and writer's block. Meanwhile she supports herself by working as a waitress. King captures the spirit of the disjointed and forlorn without being overly romantic...[in progress]

[beth.clarke · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I couldn't put down this novel and not because the plot was engrossing, it's really not, but the writing was fluent and emotional. I'm not sure I've read anything like this before. The protagonist, Casey, is my best friend, she's the person I once was, she someone all of us know. Amazing character development. This novel won't be for everyone, but it just resonated with me, and I loved it.

[kakadoo202 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

8% in. Too American. Tries too hard to be interesting and international

[marse_4 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book was my second Book of the Month selection, chosen because out of the five books offered, this one sounded the most promising to me. Well, it's clear that Lily King is a decent writer -- but I found the story completely uninteresting in any sense. A writer on the verge of a nervous break-down, being evicted from her living situation (a shed basically on someone's well-to-do property), working as a waitress, and mourning the loss of her mother must choose between 2 potential love interests. Just... meh. I would have felt like I wasted my money if I had bought this at full cover price. As it is, the Book of the Month was a gift and so far I've read 5 even though I've had the subscription for a year and a half. (Most months I simply skip because nothing grabs me.) I can't say I'm super impressed with the selections. It isn't that the writing is bad, but none of them except one, is a book I'd ever read again or even recommend to someone else.

[muddyboy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A solid novel about a young woman's struggle to find herself romantically and in her career aspirations. Initially she is a financially challenged waitress who aspires to be a novelist. Also, there are two men in her life and she needs to make a decision about which will make her best life partner. My main criticism is there is too much time spent at her restaurant waiting tables and dealing with her fellow staff. This does little to move along the plot. An adequate but generally forgettable novel.

[shazjhb · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book. The characters are well defined and true to who they are. Loved that it was set in the late 90’s with so much less technology

[rosalita_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I didn't like this one nearly as much as I wanted to. Perhaps my tolerance for characters with chaotic lives has dwindled. The ending also felt as though it was in a rush to wrap everything up with a neat, tidy "happily ever after" bow. Meh.

[tara · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Remarkable. Made me want to write!
I want to read everything she wrote.

[Sharon Hall · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book for so many reasons. Am going to send it to my nephew, who is an aspiring writer, and just lost his father. I wasn't ready for it to end. I seldom read a book twice, but will go back and read this one for the writing, the wisdom,all that I love about books.

[jphamilton-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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 $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.”

[nivramkoorb · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the 2nd book that I read by Lily King. I enjoyed Euphoria and thought this was excellent as well. As the title implies it deals with the process of writing and also dealing with love relationships. Casey Peabody is a 31 year old struggling writer living in Cambridge. She works as a waitress in a high end Boston restaurant, lives in a one room place, struggles with massive student loan debt, and the deals with the recent sudden death of her mother. King also throws in a troubled upbringing, male relationships, health issues, and dealing with her 6 years of trying to finish her first novel. I found the story engaging from the start. King is an excellent writer and although 1st person narratives can be tricky, this one not only gets into Casey's head but does a good job of letting us get to know the other characters in the book. King did throw some real tough stuff at Casey that I thought was a little over the top but she did a good job of resolving things in a positive way but didn't do it in an easy cliche manner. If you like good writing this book really is a salute to writers and the writing process. At 320 pages it is an easy read and a good way to make it through your shelter in place. I will definitely check out more books by King.

[pgchuis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.This is the story of Casey, who is living in a converted potting shed, working as a waitress, struggling with student debt, grieving for her mother, and writing a novel. It is beautifully written and I enjoyed every page of it. Casey was an excellent character - even in her grief and panic attacks she persevered at her job and with her writing - and I enjoyed the passages about her dates with Silas and Oscar. I was afraid it would be one of those novels which ends abruptly with everything up in the air, but the ending was the best bit.Highly recommended.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I don't like it when artists use their art to expound upon art. For example, movies that are about the film industry. Hollywood gushes over them but for me, some of those inside subtleties are totally lost on me. Like La La Land -- I can't be the only person who left the movie theater wondering what was the big deal about this film. Similarly, I don't like books that are about authors trying to write a book. It feels a little self-absorbed and the 'woe is me' seems self-pitying. But I found Writers & Lovers to be exceptional. Casey's efforts and sacrifice to create her first novel were tangible. It was painful to see how she struggled for YEARS to eke out a living while trying to write her book. It was heroic and epic, like Frodo carrying that huge burden all the way to Mordor, and I felt her anguish and her set backs and her struggle with the temptation to throw in the towel and take a day job in an office.Highly, highly recommend this book!