Lily King

Writers & Lovers

The New York Times Bestseller ‘Captivating, potent, incisive, and wise’ Madeline Miller ‘Extremely funny’ Sunday Times ‘Suffused with hopefulness and kindness’ Ann Patchett Recently out of a devastating love affair and mourning the loss of her beloved mum, Casey is lost. The novel she has been writing for six years isn’t going anywhere, her debt is soaring, and at thirty-one, with all her friends getting married and having kids, she feels too old for things to be this way. Then she meets Silas. He is kind, handsome, interested. But only a few weeks later, Oscar – older, fascinating, troubled – walks into her life, his two boys in tow. Suddenly Casey finds herself at the point of a love triangle, torn between two very different relationships that promise two very different futures. And she’s still got to write that book... ‘Exquisite’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Funny and immensely clever’ Tessa Hadley ‘Beautiful . . . Reading the book feels like waiting for clouds to break – a kind of gorgeous agony’ Guardian ‘I loved this book’ Curtis Sittenfeld

sariya

"Now I understand it’s how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I’ve met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny."

"People change their mind. Between the idea and the reality falls the Shadow."

"I think of all the people playing roles, getting further and further away from themselves, from what moves them, what stirs them all up inside."

"I sing to the geese. And I feel her. It's different from remembering or yearning for her. I feel her near me. I don't know if she is the outside of me or inside of me, but she is here. I feel her love for me. I feel my love reach her. A brief, easy exchange."

"I look into my eyes, but they aren't really mine, not the eyes I used to have. They're the eyes of someone very tired and very sad, and once I see them I feel even sadder and then I see that sadness, that compassion, for the sadness in my eyes, and I see the water rising in them. I'm both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person. And then I feel sad for that person who has so much compassion because she's clearly been through the same thing, too. And the cycle keeps repeating. It's like when you go into a dressing room with a three-paneled mirror and you line them up just right to see the long narrowing hallway of yourselves diminishing into infinity. It feels like that, like I'm sad for an infinite number of my selves."

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

Exuberant and affirming, it's funny and immensely clever, emotionally rare and strong. I feel bereft now I've finished' Tessa Hadley Casey has ended up back in Massachusetts after a devastating love affair. Her mother has just died and she is knocked sideways by grief and loneliness, moving between the restaurant where she waitresses for the Harvard elite and the rented shed she calls home. Her one constant is the novel she has been writing for six years, but at thirty-one she is in debt and directionless, and feels too old to be that way - it's strange, not be the youngest kind of adult anymore. And then, one evening, she meets Silas. He is kind, handsome, interested. But only a few weeks later, Oscar walks into her restaurant, his two boys in tow. He is older, grieving the loss of his wife, and wrapped up in his own creativity. Suddenly Casey finds herself at the point of a love triangle, stuck between two very different relationships that promise two very different futures. Lily King's Writers & Lovers follows Casey in the last days of a long youth, a time when everything - her family, her work, her relationships - comes to a crisis. Hugely moving and impossibly funny, it is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. It is a novel about love and creativity, and ultimately it captures the moment when a woman becomes an artist.

Writers and Lovers

Shelby Doherty

When I was a kid I used to expect to win tournaments and often did, but I stopped having expectations about achieving anything long ago.

I don't want to be infertile. I also don't want to be pregnant. Fitzgerald said that the sign of genius is being able to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. But what if you hold two contradictory fears? Are you still some kind of a genius?

I spend the night that way, passing through layers of anxiety, humiliation, and despair. Somewhere close to dawn I lose some consciousness. It isn't sleep exactly, but I have to think of it as sleep because it's all I ever get anymore

The panic feels loud as hell in my head, like being next to a speaker at a concert. I turn back on the light and try to read. The words remain words. I can't hear them. I can't lose myself in them.

For the first time the stress of the job does not obliterate my awareness of the stress in my body. It enhances it.

I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving oyu, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mix the two up in a terrible tangle that's hard to unravel.

People call day and night for reservations. Sometimes they're looking for a table for that night. Sometimes it's for a year from now. People are crazy in their planning. How do they know where they will be living next year or if they will even be alive? I'm too superstitious to make plans like that.

When it's finally over and I get out of the building, I unlock my bike but don't get on it. I don't want to get home too soon. I don't want to lie in bed churned up like this.

I check the regret box on the small return card and write an apology without an excuse. I do not mention my debt or my work commitments to the weddings of strangers or my bewilderment at why they would participate in a hollow, misogynistic ritual that will only end in misery.

She looks embarrassed, sitting on that stool, to be who she is now. She seems pained by the compliments Muriel's colleagues are giving her. Success rests more easily on men.

We went from French to a sort of hybrid of the Catalan and Castilian that he taught me, and I wonder if that's part of the reason I don't miss him, that everything we said to each other was in languages I'm starting to forget. Maybe the thrill of the relationship was the languages, that everything was heightened for me because of it, more of a challenge, as I tried to maintain his belief in my facility with languages, my ability to absorb, mimic, morph.

It's strange, to not be the youngest kind of adult anymore. I'm thirty-one now, and my mother is dead.

Writers & lovers : a novel

Fitzgerald said that the sign of genius is being able to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. But what if you hold two contradictory fears? Are you still some kind of a genius?

My chest feels like an old swollen piece of fruit about to split open with wet rot. 

It’s my biggest fantasy at these terrible moments, two EMTs in the doorway with a stretcher for me to lie down on. 

Usually a man in my life slows my work down, but it turns out two men give me fresh energy for the revision. 

A Novel

Trip Dunham 

Casey has ended up back in Massachusetts after a devastating love affair. Her mother has just died and she is knocked sideways by grief and loneliness, moving between the restaurant where she waitresses for the Harvard elite and the rented shed she calls home. Her one constant is the novel she has been writing for six years, but at thirty-one she is in debt and directionless, and feels too old to be that way - it's strange, not be the youngest kind of adult anymore. And then, one evening, she meets Silas. He is kind, handsome, interested. But only a few weeks later, Oscar walks into her restaurant, his two boys in tow. He is older, grieving the loss of his wife, and wrapped up in his own creativity. Suddenly Casey finds herself at the point of a love triangle, torn between two very different relationships that promise two very different futures.Lily King's Writers & Lovers follows Casey in the last days of a long youth, a time when everything - her family, her work, her relationships - comes to a crisis. Hugely moving and impossibly funny, it is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. It is a novel about love and creativity, and ultimately it captures the moment when a woman becomes an artist.

Ellie 

“All problems with writing and performing come from fear. Fear of exposure, fear of weakness, fear of lack of talent, fear of looking like a fool for trying, for even thinking you could write in the first place. It's all fear. If we didn't have fear, imagine the creativity in the world. Fear holds us back every step of the way. A lot of studies say that despite all our fears in this country-death, war, guns, illness our biggest fear is public speaking. What I am doing right now. And when people are asked to identify which kind of public speaking they are most afraid of, they check the improvisation box. So improvisation is the number-one fear in America. Forget a nuclear winter or an eight point nine earthquake or another Hitler. It's improv. Which is funny, because aren't we just improvising all day long? Isn't our whole life just one long improvisation? What are we so scared of?” 

Mid at best. Not a fan of the characters or plot line. That guy, Oscar.. Horrible. I liked the ending though. 

Jovana Gjekanovikj 

I loved this so much if I could describe it with one word i will choose : feelings. 

It's like a warm hug , casey unhappiness lasted forever and then it was over , I would have given the book 5 stars if there was much more of Silas and less of Oscar

I loved this so much if I could describe it with one word i will choose : feelings. 

It's like a warm hug , casey unhappiness lasted forever and then it was over , I would have given the book 5 stars if there was much more of Silas and less of Oscar

This book is very much of a slowburn for me, but it was such a good read. The way I see it, it is a book that has a love triangle in it, but it isn’t about it. Every turning page, I feel like I’m going through my day with Casey, and as a writer, boy do I feel her to my bones. 

Saffy

Gelaine Trinidad

4.5/5 

tender and comforting prose. 

"For a moment all my bees have turned to honey. "

"Between the idea and reality falls the shadow."

Maria

i might return to this later, because i just finished it and my thoughts are still a jumble. the ending could’ve been a huge hit or miss for me and i’m glad it went in the direction i wanted it to. some parts in the middle felt like they kind of lagged for a bit but once it got back on track i couldn’t put it down. it’s definitely the kind of book you need to read at a specific time when you’re in a specific mood.

An easy read that made me smile more than once 

Abigail Stutz

Isabella 

this book is amazing. the writing... the stream of consciousness brings me to the mind of the character. i was so drawn in the story probably because it felt so real. wish i could have gotten more insight of her choices in some aspects tho and i felt like the ending was rushed but its not really a dealbreaker. overall, its great!

Bella Koch

While this book was very well-written, I ultimately didn’t like it because of the storyline. 

Lily King has a way with words: this novel’s prose was beautiful, its plot structure and character development were subtle, and its description was realistic. I also think that King handled her descriptions of Casey’s anxiety and financial difficulties very well. She was able to tackle those difficult topics in an honest and insightful way. 

Another strong positive about this book was that it was thought-provoking. I think the story and characters were nuanced enough to keep me thinking about this book for several days after I finished it. 

With that said, although the plot and characters were very well written, I didn’t actually like them. What I disliked most about the plot was the way it seemed to contradict itself. For example, early in the book, one of Casey’s friends is basically telling her to pull herself up by her bootstraps. At this point, King seems to refute the idea that it’s that simple – both with Casey’s words and through Casey’s circumstances. However, at the end of the book, Casey does pull herself up by her bootstraps. It was a bit of a letdown that the book seemed like it was going to refute this common idea that people in poverty are responsible for their circumstances, and then did a complete 180. There are a few other themes handled similarly, where the book seems to contradict itself. While I understand that this can be intentional to portray nuance, in this case, it felt more like the book was unplanned and unintentionally inconsistent. 

Another aspect of this book that I really disliked was how the male characters were portrayed. There were many male characters – on the order of about ten. Almost all of them had a major character flaw that was representative of common issues with men: e.g. misogyny, condescension, sexual perversion, or infidelity. Rather than focusing on one male character or one issue, King seemed to be discussing issues with men in general. This theme felt overdone and too broad to be meaningful. 

I would still recommend reading this book to appreciate the character and plot development, but I won’t be telling people that I liked it.

gabby jusoy

'... a good story is both allegory and a slice of life. most writers are a good at one, not the other. but you are doing both so beautifully here.' and i think lily king wrote about herself here. i really love it; especially when i was in casey's side all the time, since the beginning until the end of the story. it felt like i was walking with her; reading this book was as easy as breathing.

Katie Guo

Thought I was going to love bc I usually enjoy the whole "women vs. the void" subgenre but this was mid

esperanza 

ame 

Hannah

“There’s a particular feeling in your body when something goes right after a long time of things going wrong. It feels warm and sweet and loose.” 

such a good book it’s odd and compelling and dynamic and all the good things, hard rec if you like conversations with friends or luster. This kind of book had quickly become my favorite.

taryn

3.5 stars

There were parts of this book I absolutely loved, but I also wanted more from it as well? More writing, more loving, just more. It would be building to what I wanted from it and then would fall short. But it is also beautifully written and captures that 30ish life so well too.

Caroline

I liked this book and it’s setting of Cambridge. It felt lived in and a path one could take. I read this whilst I had covid and did a good job of making me feel far away.

A great summer read! Lovely and low stress :)

Heleah Soulati

Ava Gardner

Karis Ryu

i loved that. this is a pleasure/comfort read if there ever was one. oh casey, the writer life is not one we would ever choose yet also we absolutely would, wouldn't we, again and again. it feels surreal to relate to her in some ways and then also to sit there and wonder if these thoughts are what await me in ten years. no amount of age, experience, or success will ever make the fears go away: in fact, older, richer writers might be even more insecure (as casey learns the hard way). but when the glamor is gone and you are a mess, you remember: poetry is in the everyday, if you let yourself feel it. the ending felt a lil neat but also casey's peaceful acceptance of the unstable beauty of life was palpable there and i liked that. and spoilers i guess but (view spoiler)[i KNEW we liked silas!!! (hide spoiler)] :)

Inkmelt

King's expert use of stream of consciousness has you flowing through Casey's mind as she navigates the sudden death of her mum, several lovers, a mountain of student debt, and a lousy waitressing job.

Krystyna 

A slice of life story about a woman who is trying to figure out her life. This is a lovely story full of heart, grief, and embracing your passion and dreams. It is about the character truly discovering herself, letting go of the past, and being hopeful for the future. I did enjoy the discussions the book presented and it had a lot of quotes that I tabbed. I enjoyed the writing.

Modith D.

This book would have better served itself if the title was called Whiners & Cheaters cause that's what the majority of the book consists of.

This is a character driven novel and your enjoyment of this, will rely heavily on your attitude towards the main character. A 30 year old woman who's both depressed and lost, while hating her career as well as running through a string of boyfriends.

All in all not my cup of tea

Joana da Silva

18th book read while I'm still home because the Covid-19 is still out there. 
I saw Emma Roberts endorsing this book in April and it took me 3 months to actually read it. I had heard nothing but stellar reviews about this one, but sometimes the hype doesn't match the book. It wasn't the case with this one. I fell in love with Lily King's writing and sense of humour right away. This is so such a raw story about ambition, expectations, love and reaching adult life without having any of it done. 
GREAT BOOK!

Writers & Lovers

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