Writers & Lovers - Lily King - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Lily King

GENRE: Literary Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: March 3, 2020

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A literary fiction focussing on… as the title suggests… writers and lovers. Takes some time to get to the point, but goes mostly well once all the threads become clear. Interesting flawed characters, beautiful lyrical writing. Would have worked better for me had the ending not been so desperate to offer a HEA.

Plot Preview:

1997. Thirty-one-year-old Casey Peabody was once a golf prodigy with dreams of becoming a successful writer. But now, still coping with the death of her mother a few months ago and buckling under student loans from her college days, she stays in a small room next to a garage and works as a waitress. However, she still hasn’t given up on her novel, the one that has been in the making since the last six years. When two men enter her life more or less at the same time, Casey is forced to ask herself some tough questions about what she wants for her future.

The story comes to us in Casey’s first-person perspective.

Bookish Yays:

🖋 Casey. A strange combo of mature and naïve, she sounds and acts her age. It is sometimes tough to connect to characters who are in relatively minor jobs even in their thirties as they are often depicted in a negative mode such as bitter or aggressive or defensive. Not Casey. Her dreams might seem a bit too idealistic at times, but her spirit is more matter-of-fact than whiny.

🖋 The two little men in the story, aged all of five and two. They outshine all the adult characters with their exuberance and innocence. I wish there had been more of them.

🖋 The lyrical writing, offering plenty of fodder for thought. Sample this: “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.” No woman will be able to deny the truth of this.

🖋 The strong undertone of grief without the plot feeling too maudlin. Many of the characters face grief in one way or the other, and it is interesting to see how each of them copes with their heartbreak differently. I also like how subtly the author portrays the sadness. The story hardly ever mentions the pain openly; it is just indicated through the general thoughts and actions of the characters.

🖋 All the details about the writing process: the catharsis of the writing act, the actual process of writing, the frustration of wanting an artistic career, the limited monetary success for most writers… It feels like a realistic portrayal of what it means to be an author.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

📝 The first half is a bit too haphazard. The content is literally what the title says: writers and lovers. But there is also an overlap between the two. So the first 50% or so feels like disparate threads of writers and lovers with no unified narrative. Once the story starts coming together, it becomes a bit clearer to see where the author wants to take it.

📝 This might not be applicable to most readers. But the setting left me confused. The repeated reference to Cambridge made me assume that the book was set in the UK. But there were also mentions of Boston. By the middle, I was so befuddled wondering where the heck the story was set… Google to the rescue! Turns out, there’s a Cambridge in the greater Boston area of Massachusetts, USA. Sheesh! I wish writers would choose places that don’t confuse international readers or make the country clear from the start. (In my defence, I didn’t know Lily King is American. That might have helped.)

Bookish Nays:

✏ The use of the late 1990s is an intriguing choice as that time period was on the cusp of many great changes. However, I didn’t feel much of the era come alive through the writing. Except for the lack of extensive internet/cellphone usage and a couple of random news events, the plot didn’t *feel* 90s enough. A part of this is because the writing is heavily character-focussed, but I would have appreciated a more immersive feel of those beautiful years.

✏ The adult men in the story. More annoying than interesting. Most of the men in the book are jerks to some degree or the other, and it takes some patience to wait for Casey to catch up to what we can already see.

✏ Given the above, the romantic relationships in the book also left me somewhat bored. It was refreshing to see the FMC recognise some signs of being in a problematic relationship, but the realisation came a bit too late, and also, the final *choice* wasn’t really satisfactory to me.

✏ The last one-third or so. Too perfect, with everything sorting out extra-smoothly. Until that point, the book felt like a strong literary fiction work, but these last few chapters turned it into a typical genre fiction novel. Why have so many unrealistic coincidences and conveniences such that every single one of Casey’s problems (and she did have a multitude of them) is sorted out miraculously within a few weeks?

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 8 hrs 15 min, is narrated by Stacey Glemboski. She does a commendable job, making Casey sound believable in every scene. However, the story might be a bit tricky on audio even with its chronological timeline as there are many characters and interconnections.

Overall, though I am not happy with the slightly cluttered start and the neatly-tied ending, I still like the main plot, highlighting the coming-of-age of a young woman who wants to make it big, but is weighed down by her past and present.

This is my first book by this author. I liked it enough but it is too early to say if I am a fan. My next read will be “Heart the Lover”, which is supposed to have a mysterious link to this book even though they aren’t an official series. I’m curious to discover the connection and see how it goes.

Recommended to literary fiction readers.

3.25 stars. (This would have been at least 3.75 stars had the ending been more realistic.)