Mini Review: Writers and Lovers

I’m a writer. I write fiction. I am also a woman. 

In Lily King’s WRITERS AND LOVERS, her MC, Casey Peabody, has certainly had more lovers than I, but her novel is a song to me, a beautifully written story of a woman’s search for love–the love of a man, the love and sorrow of missing and losing her mother, but most importantly, the love of writing. 

With language that is carefully wrought and filled with reality, King takes us on Casey’s journey of struggle. She’s working as a waitress in Boston. She’s living in a shed, and when the opportunity presents itself, she is writing her novel. Casey is also searching for love, and consistently finds it in the wrong places. 

But that’s her story–WRITERS AND LOVERS. King brings us close to the heartbeat of creativity, as well as the heartbeat of loss and pain. We might shake our heads at some of the men Casey falls for–yet all along we are cheering her on, because deep within her is the truest love of all–her love of creativity, of writing, of putting on the page the LIFE she is living and the WORLD she inhabits. Beautifully wrought, this novel requires marking memorable passages, clinging to the movement of the story. Bravo, Lily and brave Casey for the final decision you make!

EXCERPTS   To support my review, I have chosen some lines and passages from this lovely novel. Happy Reading. 

I feel the memory fall through my body like a stone.

When people have babies they stop calling you back. 

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

I am wasting my life, I am wasting my life. It pounds like a heartbeat. 

The hardest thing about writing is getting in every day, breaking through the membrane. 

(her mother says to Casey) “Tomorrow after you leave, I will stand here at the window and remember that yesterday you were right here with me.”

People die when they go on trips.

(a comment made while looking at a painting by Singer Sargent: There’s madness to beauty when you stumble on it like that. 

You don’t realize how much effort you’ve put into covering things up until you try to dig them out. 

The panic feels loud as hell in my head….Something eases and aches in my head at the same time. 

I can’t stay still. But I’m scared to leave. I don’t want to walk down the driveway and out to the street, I’m scared I won’t come back. I’m scared I’ll burst or dissolve or veer straight into traffic. I’m scared of men in cars and men in doorways, men in groups and men alone. They are menacing. Men-acing. Men-dacious. Med-tal. …They justify everything their dicks make them do. 

Being around kids means thinking a whole lot of things you can’t say. 

(scattering her mother’s ashes)    I don’t allow myself to believe that my mother’s body–her hair, her smile, the two chords that made the sound of her voice, her heart, her good bum, her moisturized legs, her toes that tinkled when she walked–has been burned down to this rubble in my hand.

PS See what I mean… her writing burns into your imagination…it lingers, it is powerful. Thanks for reading.