Writers and Lovers

Good grief, where has Lily King been all of my life!? Somehow, she was not really on my radar until Heart the Lover, and now even having read only two of her books, she is becoming one of my favorite authors. The writing is so gorgeous that I felt jealous at times. The characters are just wonderful. Casey, bereft and still reeling from the death of her mother (and then a subsequent heartbreak), is struggling. It is the nineties. She’s drowning in debt, living in a moldy room off of her brother’s friend’s garage, and cannot seem to finish her novel. She works at a restaurant in Boston where the brunch chef regularly harasses her. She cannot seem to get a break. She’s thirty-one, has very few friends (though Muriel and Harry are two A++ characters who always have Casey’s back), and so many things (bills, medical advice, her job) just feel insurmountable. Still, she has one thing that so many of her former friends and peers have given up on: a determination to live a creative life, no matter the cost. When she finds herself dating two very different men (a successful author 15 years her senior and a young writer her own age), she finds herself flailing yet again. This is a story of triumph against the odds and believing in your craft. I couldn’t put it down. I loved Casey (and felt like I already knew her, as I’d read Heart the Lover first.