Olive Fellows (abookolive)'s Reviews > Writers & Lovers

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The below review originally appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

On the shortlist of things one should never, ever say to a writer, “I just find it extraordinary that you think you have something to say,” would rank in the top three. Yet these words are carelessly hurled at the hopeful novelist Casey Peabody by her pompous Boston landlord early on in Lily King’s new novel, the aptly titled “Writers & Lovers.” Highly anticipated following her celebrated 2014 work, “Euphoria,” Lily King’s new book is a slightly “meta” account of a young writer struggling to complete her novel.

It’s 1997 and Casey spends her days waiting tables at an upscale restaurant, and her nights attempting to get her first book down on paper while she battles anxiety, self-doubt and grief. An educated and capable woman in her early 30s, she’s suffocating under heaps of student debt and grieving the sudden loss of her mother. A child golf prodigy, Casey long ago gave up a potentially lucrative career within the sport to pursue a life in the arts — and to put some distance between herself and her father. The sport is permanently soured for her, but we get the impression she deeply misses the former feeling of mastery as she presently flounders.

The majority of her writer friends have long since switched over to “real” jobs, only furthering the feelings of isolation and self-ridicule as she toils away, wondering if there will ever be a next phase in her life. Her desire to finish her novel — a project inspired by her mother — is strong, but calls from debt collectors and punishing shifts at the restaurant test her resolve.

As if her existing stressors weren’t enough, two men materialize in her life, one with whom she shares a chemistry that scares her, and the other whose life contains everything she covets. Ms. King strikes a balance between these two simultaneous love interests as easily as she did in “Euphoria” by avoiding the typical irritants of the love triangle dynamic and letting the situation instead provide further insight into Casey’s unattended demons. She inevitably must choose between the two men, but not before she spends time answering questions about her life she didn’t even know she had.

This is unquestionably a story about writing, but the prose is mostly barren of any mention of Casey’s writing process. There is no obsession with word count, no staring off into space in an attempt to pin down the perfect word, no fist-shaking at the shapeless creative enemy, writer’s block. Her writing is personal, something she keeps close to the chest. Even in conversation with another character about her work-in-progress, Casey desperately wants to change the subject. Speaking about her novel, she says, makes her “feel flayed alive.”

Yet the act of writing is still the center point around which the narrative revolves. Writing is Casey’s constant yet silent companion, the most complex relationship she has in the novel. The majority of the narrative space is refreshingly dominated by Casey’s attempts to navigate the social politics of her restaurant job and make the right choice of man, but we get the sense that her writing is what helps her cope with these matters. It is the means by which she resolves the internal conflict of her past and present, and her way of putting into words all that she can’t say to the people around her.

Throughout, we’re tempted to forget the real writer here is Lily King, disappearing behind the story of Casey’s first novel being born. What at first appears to be a surface-level, nostalgic venture into the life of a starving artist in the ’90s slowly becomes an examination of all that writing demands and provides. In this novel, writing is both passion and hardship, reprieve and punishment. It allows Casey to close earlier chapters of her life and open to a blank page.

“Writers & Lovers” is a triumph of a novel, as witty as it is profound. A queen of nuance, Ms. King hides an arsenal of emotional power behind quiet, intentional prose. Nearly every word of this novel seems carefully and deliberately chosen, rewarding close readers and promising re-readers an even deeper experience. Most significantly, although Ms. King’s portrayal of a writer’s life is brutally honest, it urges all of us to personally take on the agony, but also the sublime ecstasy of the writer’s journey. After all, we all have something to say, it’s merely about finding the right words with which to say it.