luce (cry baby)'s Reviews > Writers & Lovers

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

In Writers & Lovers, Lily King portrays an intimate and profoundly heartfelt slice of life that brims with wry humor and precise observations on grief, loneliness, identity, and creativity. This is truly a gem of a novel, a wonderful display of bravura. King seamlessly blends together realism and romanticism, capturing with humor and tenderness Casey’s everyday experiences and struggles.

“[I] think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, 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.”

Writers & Lovers transports its readers to Massachusetts in the summer of 1997. Casey Peabody, our narrator, is in her thirties and attempting to navigate life after her mother’s sudden death. A recent heartbreak has made her feel all the more lonely and vulnerable, and Casey clearly longs to feel that she belongs and that she has not wasted the last years of her life writing a book that will never be published. While most of her friends have abandoned their creative pursuits—opting for more sensible careers and or starting their own families—Casey remains devoted to her writing and to the idea of one day becoming a published author. After her mother’s death, Casey feels even more unmoored and unsure of herself. She finds herself observing the customers who eat at the restaurant she works for, yearning for a connection of her own. Eventually, Casey grows close to two men, both of them writers, one is famous and a widowed father of two, the other is around her age.

“I have a problem with that sometimes, getting attached. Other people’s families are a weakness of mine.”

This novel gives us a glimpse into a particular period of Casey’s life. From her day-to-day activities and worries to the sorrow she feels at her mother’s death and the anxiety brought by her writing, her job, her college debt, and health concerns. The wry wit that characterises her inner-monologue mitigate the many trials and misadventures, Casey, experiences throughout the course of the novel. While the romantic relationships she forms along the way does play a role in Casey’s journey, this novel is first and foremost about her writing. From the process of creating a story to how it feels to write, Writers & Lovers is very much a love letter to writing. Casey’s reflections on writing reveal her relationship to this craft as well as the different ways in which the public and publishing industry view male and female authors. King’s meditations on life, grief, and creativity demonstrate extreme acuity and insight.

“What I have had for the past six years, what has been constant and steady in my life is the novel I’ve been writing. This has been my home, the place I could always retreat to. The place I could sometimes even feel powerful, I tell them. The place where I am most myself.”

Casey is the novel’s star and I found her voice to be hugely endearing. Despite her dalliances with melancholy, deep-down she remains hopeful that she will publish her novel. King captures Casey’s idiosyncrasies, her quirks, the way she thinks and expresses herself, in such vivid detail that she felt very much like a real person to me. The characters around her too came across as fully fleshed out individuals whose story doesn’t revolve around Casey herself. They are nuanced and multifaceted, regardless of how often they crop up in Casey’s narrative. The restaurant scenes were so realistic that they reminded me of my unfortunate time in F&D (it truly feels like a microcosm).

Writers & Lovers is a deeply affecting and ultimately hopeful story about a woman’s determination to pursue her dreams, in spite of societal pressure and of other people undermining her capabilities as an author or life choices. The author’s prose, the setting, the characters, the subject matter, all of these spoke to me. While reading Writers & Lovers I was struck by a sense of nostalgia while reading this, perhaps due to it being set in the 90s, which is still lingering over me as I write this. I found myself desperate to see how Casey’s story would conclude and unwilling to part ways with her.

“It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”

Inspiring, witty, delightfully intertextual, full of heart Writers & Lovers is a truly luminous novel that I can’t wait to read again and again.

PS: the first time I tried reading this I hated it so I can see why it wouldn’t appeal to everyone. At the time I was in the doldrums and took Casey’s romantic expression too seriously. My apologises to the 40 people or so who liked my original review of this but I now love this book (what can i say, i'm a turncoat 🤡).

re-read: loved it just as much <3












ORIGINAL REVIEW (29/09/2019)

DNF at 20%

“When he kissed me he smelled like Europe”


...the guy happens to be Spanish so yes, of course he smells like Europe. Us Europeans have a very distinctive smell...
I just wander what this type of pointless description is trying to achieve.
Unsurprisingly, I've come to conclusion that this book is not for me.
Not only did I dislike the writing style but I found the story to be both trivial and banal. The narrative tries, and fails, to come across as a subversive story that follows the mundane trials experienced by an unpublished female writer (yes, we will be reminded in a few not so subtle ways that we are indeed reading of a writer who is a woman, not a man) whose personality is the usual blend of pathetic and alienated. She is treated badly by everyone around her, and we should feel something for her because she can't seem to get any writing done and she's also been dumped by her sort of lover....She makes a series of self-pitying and puerile contemplations regarding her own writing, writing itself, and her ambitions and desires. Yet, these observations lacked a distinctive voice, seeming to originate from no person in particular.
There were certain scenes that lacked clarity and cohesiveness, I wasn't sure when they started or ended as the narrator was too busy playing her own violin to make any sort of sense. I'm fine with narratives that rely on introspection but here our narrator's mental meanderings seemed merely superfluous additions that added little to no value to her character or her history.
Plus there were phrases such as the following that I really disliked:
—“that book made my nethersphere sore” (whatever that might mean)
—“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”
–My body aches from my throat to my groin.I want him to slide his fingers into my bathing suit and make all the heaviness and misery go away ” (the one that made me quit this book for once and for all).

Reading all of this made me laugh, and I'm not sure that was the intended effect behind their inclusion. I just found this to be a sloppy and predictable tale of an alienated woman who is unsure of her place in the world. This is one of the many recent releases that attempt to provide us with a self-aware look into the life of a writer...and similarly to Bunny it tries to make fun of writing in general.
If you are looking for a thought-provoking novel featuring the ups and downs of a creative mind, in this case a photographer, I would recommend Self-Portrait with Boy. If you want to read of a book narrated by a restlessly detached protagonist maybe you should pick up something by Ottessa Moshfegh.

ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.