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A review by spenkevich
Writers & Lovers by Lily King
4.0
‘I don't write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don't, everything feels even worse.’
Frequently romanticized though rarely all that glamorous, the life of an emerging or struggling audience has been a captivating narrative through-out the history of literature. Perhaps it is because we see ourselves in them and can find hope, comforted in the realization that everyone is flawed and runs aground from time to time. While Writers and Lovers by Lily King isn’t exactly breaking uncharted territory, it is such a blissful encapsulation of the genre delivered in such engaging writing that I found myself unable to stop thinking about it and rooting for King’s heroine, 31 year old Casey Peabody, the whole way. There is something akin to the works of [a:Sally Rooney|15860970|Sally Rooney|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1534007127p2/15860970.jpg] here, though a bit less gritty and more easily-likeable characters, that I found really satisfying. Or, as emma so perfectly phrased it when recommending it to me, it feels like ‘if Sally Rooney wrote a romcom,’ which is probably the best explanation (she always has the best succinct analysis that hits right to the heart of matters). This is such an adorable and empathetic novel with the right amount of grit beneath it’s welcoming veneer, addressing issues of poverty, misogyny and the ways society pulls you away from the work you truly wish to be doing and King’s lovely story is certain to warm your heart and keep the flame of artistic endeavours alive.
‘It seems like another problem. And problems are mounting.’
Down on her luck after the death of her mother and an uncomfortable break-up, Casey is six years into writing a novel about her mother that she’s afraid may never come to fruition though it is becoming her last grip to keep her mother alive in her heart. Returning to her college setting in Boston, she now works at a high-end restaurant on Harvard’s campus that takes up most of her time, returning early in the morning by bike to the tiny room rented out by her brother’s friend who clearly looks down on her. You could call it cliched but it never reads as such and it hit me right in the memories of my late twenties scrambling to stay afloat, heartbroken and lonely while one of my jobs was a high-end catering company. Those sections of the novel were such a delight because they are so incredibly accurate and I could practically associate each character with someone I knew. ‘There are long periods of time when we line the wall and watch the wedding party, each with our own particular cynicism,’ she writes of catering weddings, and oh damn do I relate. What I’m trying to get at here is this novel breathes with reality and the frenetic episodic nature of the book where there are endless problems looming and blooming overhead are cut from the fabric of hard living.
Having Casey be 31 years old opens the novel for some excellent existential ponderings, having your “youth” feel like its fading in the rear-view mirror while the future is awash in fog and you can’t find your map. ‘It’s strange, to not be the youngest kind of adult anymore,’ she thinks while riding past the college kids in the park, ‘I’m thirty-one now, and my mother is dead.’ During my own times that made me relate to this book I also lived right on the edge of a college campus, through which I would walk to get to work (and leave poems behind on all the trees) and inevitably contemplate the forward march of time while feeling there was scant to show for it. Basically, I felt this book deep within me and I think it’s a novel that would resonate with anyone of any age (set in 1997, it is awash in sepia tones of nostalgia, with casually placed nods to the time period).
There is a really great romantic angle to this as well, with Casey caught between dating both Oscar, an older already successful novelist, and one of Oscar’s students, Silas, who is Casey’s age and a bit of an adorable dork driving around in a car about to collapse. Sally Rooney fans will enjoy this angle as it reminded me a lot of her, but if you didn’t like Beautiful World, Where Are You? you’ll be glad to know this is almost the opposite of the relationships in there (ie. nobody is into torture porn and when the older man is mistaken for her father with the waiter calling her his ‘little girl’ it doesn’t make him horny but embarassed). Jokes aside, I quite enjoy Rooney and the the intricacies and flaws of her characters, so while these are well written I occasionally thought they were almsot too likable. Though the dynamic between them is always great, and King does build suspense over who Casey will end up with. Oscar's adorable children are fantastic too. King does well by looking at how uncomfortable it can be to introduce children into a new relationship, even with best intentions, because now young lives are getting attached to a relationship that might fail.
‘Are you more of an adult because two men are giving you the illusion of self-sufficiency?’
Even with the love angle, the problems of being a woman in society are certainly woven through the narrative. Being taken less seriously as a writer to straight up sexual harassment pop up frequently, layered into the novel without much attention as if a quiet commentary on how normalized it is in society (there is an excellent commentary on how women authors must appear plesant and open in author photos while men can look brooding, mean, or overtly “serious”) Even when it is blatant, such as with toxic cooks at work, other men rush in to tell her she’s the one being rediculous and that they didn’t mean anything by being sexually aggressive or dehumanizing beyond some laughs.
Though Casey also finds it is simply hard to be taken serious as an artist, and watches gloomily as all her MFA friends quickly give up on their pursuits of art for marriage or banker jobs. ‘I just find it extraordinary you think you have something to say,’ her landlord tells her right at the start of the book. One of the best parts of the book is the way Casey never let’s anything crush her dreams, even when she is completely emotionally crushed, and she is such a plucky indie film author heroine in the best ways. When her gynecologist asks ‘So, you gonna write the Great American Novel?’ she retorts with ‘You gonna cure ovarian cancer?’
Though this novel is soft and warm, it is not without its depth and hardships. Beyond issues of poverty, the issue of loss is at the center of the book with everything revolving around it. Her mother’s absence has gone through her ‘like thread through a needle,’ as poet [a:W.S. Merwin|32513|W.S. Merwin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1330844843p2/32513.jpg] wrote, ‘everything I do is stitched with its color.’ The writing of her novel becomes a form of therapy, and writing it about her mother keeps her close and alive despite knowing she is not. Though, it seems, this is not enough and King reminds us that actual therapy is sometimes needed and nothing to be ashamed of. ‘This is not nothing,’ her therapist tells her. ‘Of all his strange responses,’ she thinks, ‘this is the one that helps me the most. This is not nothing.’ It is a moving reminder our problems are never nothing, they are real to us and we are allowed to feel them, acknowledge them, and have them be acknowledged.
King uses geese as a wonderful symbolism for hope in the novel, and I love the way they are threaded through the story, their presence indicative with the passage of time both seasonally and away from the death of her mother.
This hope keeps the novel afloat in the darker sections and keeps the reader right there along with Casey in her struggles. It makes for a beautiful read and I’m thankful to all the amazing people on here who encouraged me to read this. It was interesting coming to this after [b:Five Tuesdays in Winter|57812401|Five Tuesdays in Winter|Lily King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1619803925l/57812401._SX50_.jpg|90525460] and seeing how stories such as Timeline felt so similar to this book or how what happens with the brother and landlord here is much more effective than the expanded upon version in Hotel Seattle. This is a very charming novel that I found to be extremely comforting to read these past few weeks. It is a great piece cozily nestled into its time and place and, while admittedly very white, shows the struggles of young adults quite well. I loved following along with Casey on her journey and feeling inspired by her. There are many highs and lows in this novel, but they all feel very earned and even the ending doesn’t come across as trite or overly happy as it does seem to build to it effectively. A wonderful novel, and I am certainly a King convert now.
4.5/5
Frequently romanticized though rarely all that glamorous, the life of an emerging or struggling audience has been a captivating narrative through-out the history of literature. Perhaps it is because we see ourselves in them and can find hope, comforted in the realization that everyone is flawed and runs aground from time to time. While Writers and Lovers by Lily King isn’t exactly breaking uncharted territory, it is such a blissful encapsulation of the genre delivered in such engaging writing that I found myself unable to stop thinking about it and rooting for King’s heroine, 31 year old Casey Peabody, the whole way. There is something akin to the works of [a:Sally Rooney|15860970|Sally Rooney|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1534007127p2/15860970.jpg] here, though a bit less gritty and more easily-likeable characters, that I found really satisfying. Or, as emma so perfectly phrased it when recommending it to me, it feels like ‘if Sally Rooney wrote a romcom,’ which is probably the best explanation (she always has the best succinct analysis that hits right to the heart of matters). This is such an adorable and empathetic novel with the right amount of grit beneath it’s welcoming veneer, addressing issues of poverty, misogyny and the ways society pulls you away from the work you truly wish to be doing and King’s lovely story is certain to warm your heart and keep the flame of artistic endeavours alive.
‘It seems like another problem. And problems are mounting.’
Down on her luck after the death of her mother and an uncomfortable break-up, Casey is six years into writing a novel about her mother that she’s afraid may never come to fruition though it is becoming her last grip to keep her mother alive in her heart. Returning to her college setting in Boston, she now works at a high-end restaurant on Harvard’s campus that takes up most of her time, returning early in the morning by bike to the tiny room rented out by her brother’s friend who clearly looks down on her. You could call it cliched but it never reads as such and it hit me right in the memories of my late twenties scrambling to stay afloat, heartbroken and lonely while one of my jobs was a high-end catering company. Those sections of the novel were such a delight because they are so incredibly accurate and I could practically associate each character with someone I knew. ‘There are long periods of time when we line the wall and watch the wedding party, each with our own particular cynicism,’ she writes of catering weddings, and oh damn do I relate. What I’m trying to get at here is this novel breathes with reality and the frenetic episodic nature of the book where there are endless problems looming and blooming overhead are cut from the fabric of hard living.
Having Casey be 31 years old opens the novel for some excellent existential ponderings, having your “youth” feel like its fading in the rear-view mirror while the future is awash in fog and you can’t find your map. ‘It’s strange, to not be the youngest kind of adult anymore,’ she thinks while riding past the college kids in the park, ‘I’m thirty-one now, and my mother is dead.’ During my own times that made me relate to this book I also lived right on the edge of a college campus, through which I would walk to get to work (and leave poems behind on all the trees) and inevitably contemplate the forward march of time while feeling there was scant to show for it. Basically, I felt this book deep within me and I think it’s a novel that would resonate with anyone of any age (set in 1997, it is awash in sepia tones of nostalgia, with casually placed nods to the time period).
There is a really great romantic angle to this as well, with Casey caught between dating both Oscar, an older already successful novelist, and one of Oscar’s students, Silas, who is Casey’s age and a bit of an adorable dork driving around in a car about to collapse. Sally Rooney fans will enjoy this angle as it reminded me a lot of her, but if you didn’t like Beautiful World, Where Are You? you’ll be glad to know this is almost the opposite of the relationships in there (ie. nobody is into torture porn and when the older man is mistaken for her father with the waiter calling her his ‘little girl’ it doesn’t make him horny but embarassed). Jokes aside, I quite enjoy Rooney and the the intricacies and flaws of her characters, so while these are well written I occasionally thought they were almsot too likable. Though the dynamic between them is always great, and King does build suspense over who Casey will end up with. Oscar's adorable children are fantastic too. King does well by looking at how uncomfortable it can be to introduce children into a new relationship, even with best intentions, because now young lives are getting attached to a relationship that might fail.
‘Are you more of an adult because two men are giving you the illusion of self-sufficiency?’
Even with the love angle, the problems of being a woman in society are certainly woven through the narrative. Being taken less seriously as a writer to straight up sexual harassment pop up frequently, layered into the novel without much attention as if a quiet commentary on how normalized it is in society (there is an excellent commentary on how women authors must appear plesant and open in author photos while men can look brooding, mean, or overtly “serious”) Even when it is blatant, such as with toxic cooks at work, other men rush in to tell her she’s the one being rediculous and that they didn’t mean anything by being sexually aggressive or dehumanizing beyond some laughs.
‘‘I hate male cowardice and the way they always have each other’s backs. They have no control. They justify everything their dicks make them do. And they get away with it. Nearly every time.’
Though Casey also finds it is simply hard to be taken serious as an artist, and watches gloomily as all her MFA friends quickly give up on their pursuits of art for marriage or banker jobs. ‘I just find it extraordinary you think you have something to say,’ her landlord tells her right at the start of the book. One of the best parts of the book is the way Casey never let’s anything crush her dreams, even when she is completely emotionally crushed, and she is such a plucky indie film author heroine in the best ways. When her gynecologist asks ‘So, you gonna write the Great American Novel?’ she retorts with ‘You gonna cure ovarian cancer?’
Though this novel is soft and warm, it is not without its depth and hardships. Beyond issues of poverty, the issue of loss is at the center of the book with everything revolving around it. Her mother’s absence has gone through her ‘like thread through a needle,’ as poet [a:W.S. Merwin|32513|W.S. Merwin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1330844843p2/32513.jpg] wrote, ‘everything I do is stitched with its color.’ The writing of her novel becomes a form of therapy, and writing it about her mother keeps her close and alive despite knowing she is not. Though, it seems, this is not enough and King reminds us that actual therapy is sometimes needed and nothing to be ashamed of. ‘This is not nothing,’ her therapist tells her. ‘Of all his strange responses,’ she thinks, ‘this is the one that helps me the most. This is not nothing.’ It is a moving reminder our problems are never nothing, they are real to us and we are allowed to feel them, acknowledge them, and have them be acknowledged.
King uses geese as a wonderful symbolism for hope in the novel, and I love the way they are threaded through the story, their presence indicative with the passage of time both seasonally and away from the death of her mother.
‘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 black ahead of me is a mere specter, that life is lighter and more playful than I’m giving it credit for.’
This hope keeps the novel afloat in the darker sections and keeps the reader right there along with Casey in her struggles. It makes for a beautiful read and I’m thankful to all the amazing people on here who encouraged me to read this. It was interesting coming to this after [b:Five Tuesdays in Winter|57812401|Five Tuesdays in Winter|Lily King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1619803925l/57812401._SX50_.jpg|90525460] and seeing how stories such as Timeline felt so similar to this book or how what happens with the brother and landlord here is much more effective than the expanded upon version in Hotel Seattle. This is a very charming novel that I found to be extremely comforting to read these past few weeks. It is a great piece cozily nestled into its time and place and, while admittedly very white, shows the struggles of young adults quite well. I loved following along with Casey on her journey and feeling inspired by her. There are many highs and lows in this novel, but they all feel very earned and even the ending doesn’t come across as trite or overly happy as it does seem to build to it effectively. A wonderful novel, and I am certainly a King convert now.
4.5/5