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4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
7,364 global ratings
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Writers & Lovers: A Novel

Writers & Lovers: A Novel

byLily King
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prisrob
TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE
5.0 out of 5 starsThis Is Not Nothing
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2020
It is difficult becoming an adult, at times, and in particular when you are in your 30’s. Not settled, no profession of means, no permanent relationship, no offspring, just a muddle. Casey feels all of this and more. Full of debt that grows larger everyday, a job as a waitress, living in a potting shed, and writing a novel that is just taking forever.

Casey aka Camila, lives near Boston, commutes to her waitress job in Boston on her banana bike. She has friends, a jerk for a landlord and her book. She tries not to think too much about her top three worries, her mother’s recent death, her huge student loans, and the man she met this summer, a married poet who swept her off her feet. While she is involved in the grief she feels from her mother’s death, she is trying to live, to be kind and care about others, without her need to hide all the feelings. Everything around her feels the cynicism, that is the way to make it through the day.

This novel by Lily King is fresh, vibrant, the characters leap off the page. In this day of digital devices, it is refreshing to have a young woman finding her way with every mistake she makes, but holding onto her dreams. She wants love, a family, but her grief and her uncertainty are holding her back. Casey has two lovers, a promise of a better job, and must make decisions. She is aware of her peccadilloes, and, in this way she is learning her craft. Her writing carries her, and her friends and her work reinforce this need. She has to write she says not because she thinks she has something to say. She writes because when she doesn’t everything feels worse. This is not nothing.

Recommended. prisrob 03-03-2020
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101 people found this helpful

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Jen C.
VINE VOICE
3.0 out of 5 starsFor the literary crowd
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2020
Writers & Lovers is not a light read or a beach read. It is clearly literary fiction and the intended audience is people who are literary themselves. With that being said, it can come off a little pretentious. It is slow moving because it is much more focused on character development and literary elements than on a fast-paced plot. However, that doesn't mean it isn't a good read. For me, it was a satisfying read, but it probably won't be one of my favorites of the year.

It took me a while to get into, but I did find myself invested in it. I wanted Casey to get her life together and have her dreams come true. Now that she is in her thirties, most of her friends have given up on their creative passions and pursued more "normal" careers and lives. Along the way, Casey writes and falls in and out of love with other writers and struggles to deal with the grief of losing her mother suddenly. So, it felt like a book for an audience of writers and other creative artists.

I feel like this one quote from the book sums up the whole book itself: "It's really a book about art and becoming an artist and all the ways it ruins people, actually."
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177 people found this helpful

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From the United States

prisrob
TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE
5.0 out of 5 stars This Is Not Nothing
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2020
Verified Purchase
It is difficult becoming an adult, at times, and in particular when you are in your 30’s. Not settled, no profession of means, no permanent relationship, no offspring, just a muddle. Casey feels all of this and more. Full of debt that grows larger everyday, a job as a waitress, living in a potting shed, and writing a novel that is just taking forever.

Casey aka Camila, lives near Boston, commutes to her waitress job in Boston on her banana bike. She has friends, a jerk for a landlord and her book. She tries not to think too much about her top three worries, her mother’s recent death, her huge student loans, and the man she met this summer, a married poet who swept her off her feet. While she is involved in the grief she feels from her mother’s death, she is trying to live, to be kind and care about others, without her need to hide all the feelings. Everything around her feels the cynicism, that is the way to make it through the day.

This novel by Lily King is fresh, vibrant, the characters leap off the page. In this day of digital devices, it is refreshing to have a young woman finding her way with every mistake she makes, but holding onto her dreams. She wants love, a family, but her grief and her uncertainty are holding her back. Casey has two lovers, a promise of a better job, and must make decisions. She is aware of her peccadilloes, and, in this way she is learning her craft. Her writing carries her, and her friends and her work reinforce this need. She has to write she says not because she thinks she has something to say. She writes because when she doesn’t everything feels worse. This is not nothing.

Recommended. prisrob 03-03-2020
101 people found this helpful
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JQuindaro
5.0 out of 5 stars A nuanced look at things that matter.
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2020
Verified Purchase
I Kindled this the day it came out and now that I've finished I can finally resume my life, reluctant though I may be to leave this congenial narrator and her finely rendered world. This is literary fiction of the best kind, not bogged down in overwrought sentences or hyper-emotionalism. The prose is clear and concise and the relationships between Casey and the two writers in her life are finely drawn. Her monetary woes and the death of her mother (we know from the start) and the problems with her father are believable and not sentimentalized. The setting is Boston, and you feel like you're there, but her descriptions are always on point and never gratuitous. But mostly, I just liked the whole deal! Lily King is a smart writer and made me feel like a smart reader.
69 people found this helpful
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Jen C.
VINE VOICE
3.0 out of 5 stars For the literary crowd
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2020
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
Writers & Lovers is not a light read or a beach read. It is clearly literary fiction and the intended audience is people who are literary themselves. With that being said, it can come off a little pretentious. It is slow moving because it is much more focused on character development and literary elements than on a fast-paced plot. However, that doesn't mean it isn't a good read. For me, it was a satisfying read, but it probably won't be one of my favorites of the year.

It took me a while to get into, but I did find myself invested in it. I wanted Casey to get her life together and have her dreams come true. Now that she is in her thirties, most of her friends have given up on their creative passions and pursued more "normal" careers and lives. Along the way, Casey writes and falls in and out of love with other writers and struggles to deal with the grief of losing her mother suddenly. So, it felt like a book for an audience of writers and other creative artists.

I feel like this one quote from the book sums up the whole book itself: "It's really a book about art and becoming an artist and all the ways it ruins people, actually."
177 people found this helpful
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Susie | Novel Visits
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Story of Finding One's Self in the Midst of Grief
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2020
Verified Purchase
Let’s just get right to it. I loved Writers & Lovers! It’s my favorite book so far this year and I can say with confidence that Lily King’s novel will be making an appearance on my Best Books of 2020 list. Rather than sum up what this book is about, I’m going to share the many reasons why I liked it so very much.

King’s Storytelling – I’ve seen some call it uneven, but I didn’t see that. From start to finish I was captivated by Casey’s story and fully immersed in Lily King’s gorgeous writing.
Grief – In the story, Casey (already estranged from her father) has recently lost her mother and King’s exploration of her grief resonated throughout the story. She made me ache for Casey’s loss.
“I might still be capable of feeling happy. She will want to know that. But I can’t tell her. That’s the wall I always slam into on a good morning like this. My mother will be worrying about me, and I can’t tell her I’m okay.”

“During the day I miss the novel. I’ve lost access to a world where my mother is a little girl reading in a window or twirling in fast circles on the street, her braids raised high off her back. Outside of that novel she is dead. There seems no end to the procession of things that make my mother feel more dead.”

“I’m in the mood to call my mother, that happy shift in the wind mood. I calculate the time in Phoenix. Nearly noon. Perfect. The bolt retracts, and I remember she died.“

The Writing Process – I enjoyed getting to know a character that had been completely consumed by the creative process for years. To her own financial and personal detriment, Casey could not let go. I also appreciated how self-aware Casey was, constantly questioning herself and where her life was going, yet through it all, she kept at it.
Relationships – In the past, Casey has been involved with men who were never quite right for her. As Writer’s & Lovers unfolds she meets two very different men, both writers like herself, each adding a layer of confusion to her life.
“It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”

Cast of Characters – I thoroughly enjoyed the entire group of characters that moved in and out of Casey’s life and I especially enjoyed those at the restaurant where she worked.
The Ending – Casey’s crisis point and its resolution worked for me. I even got a little teary at the end.
From start to finish, I delighted living in Casey’s world, watching the evolution of a young writer on the brink of change. Obviously, I highly recommend Writers & Lovers.

Note: I received a copy of this book from Grove Press (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.
46 people found this helpful
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JB
1.0 out of 5 stars A lot of problems...
Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2020
Verified Purchase
Words to describe the writing: Pretentious, cliche, and filled with platitudes.

I wanted to like this book, but the main character is just over-privileged and annoying.

I was also disappointed that the tension in the plot comes down to her love life in a very chicklit style rather than a deeper and more intriguing study of what it truly means to write and what it means to be a woman trying to access deeper truths in her writing that she can't seem to get in her real life.

Could've been much, much better.
85 people found this helpful
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J. B. Perkins
1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2020
Verified Purchase
I did not finish this novel, so maybe it became a great read at some point, but I could not get there. The main character is depressed and describes in detail her bike ride to work and on which roads she cried - there were quite a few. Her day is pretty detailed with unimportant conversations with people at work, no one very likable. She's in debt that she can't get out of. Did she not know when she went to Europe that she went to college and grad school on loans that would have to be paid back? I gave up after awhile because I really didn't care what happened next. It was depressing, self involved and boring. I think a novel should get your interest early on and this did not do that.
62 people found this helpful
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Dianne
5.0 out of 5 stars Coming of Age at 31
Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2020
Verified Purchase
I did not want this book to end. I slowed my reading considerably as I neared it. I had become so immersed in Casey's life that I didn't want to leave her. You can come of age at any age, and Casey is in the midst of that in this fine novel. She is 31, deeply in debt from college loans, living in a "potting shed" only by the good graces of her brother's friend, Adam. She has been writing her novel for six years, fearful she will never finish, fearful that she will. She has had numerous jobs, lived in numerous places, experienced numerous relationships and yet, she is unfinished. With the backdrop of Iris, a Boston upscale restaurant, Casey is on server auto-pilot with no path to finding her life in the midst of grief over her mother's death, grief for what has not been and fears of what will not be. The ending is lovely but not really and end but a beginning for Casey. I believe I've found a new author that really speaks to me.
14 people found this helpful
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Jody Harris
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book alert - fall in love with this funny character
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2020
Verified Purchase
This is a great book about a brighter with anxiety who overcomes many struggles in her personal life to finish her first novel after six long years. I loved this character! I wish I could go have coffee with her. If there’s one thing great about being quarantined to the house right now it’s that I can read books till my heart is content! This is a good one. Makes me want to write a novel and work through my own struggles.
8 people found this helpful
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Maggie Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars I Loved this book
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2020
Verified Purchase
When was the last time you came to the end of a book and found tears forming at the corners of your eyes and wished you could start reading it all over again? The "plot" of this novel is thin - we meet a young woman writer, Casey, who is working a dead-end restaurant job, who is deeply in debt, who is very close to being evicted, who is finishing a novel she's been working on for six years, who is torn between two men, both or neither of which may be right for her and is mourning the death of her beloved mother a year before. And yet by the time I got to the end, Casey was someone I wanted to keep close, to read more about, to watch the rest of her life unfold. The last time I had a similar feeling about a fictional character was Olive Ketteridge. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is a gem. Lily King is my new hero. I liked and admired Euphoria. But I LOVED Writers & Lovers.
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R. Ford
5.0 out of 5 stars A Gentle Current Through the Stream of a Writer's Consciousness
Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2020
Verified Purchase
This book had me from the beginning, but I loved it even more by the end. The writing felt like a gentle current, carrying me down the stream of the protagonist's consciousness. Casey (a.k.a. Catalina) Peabody is a writer; whatever else she is or does revolves around that. She has come to a fork in the road of her life, with multiple crises points: a mountain of student debt, day job issues, the death of her mother, figuring out what she wants in a romantic relationship, a health scare, and her landlord is selling her studio apartment. The look into her writing process, and that it continues in spite of all the other obstacles and distractions life puts in her way, was inspiring to me and led to some insights about my own writing (or current lack thereof). This book also gave me some late '90's nostalgia, which I enjoyed. When I read the last bit, I wanted to cheer. Here we have what has become a bit of a rare bird recently (at least in my reading experience the past few years): literary fiction with a happy ending for the protagonist!

Now, is everyone going to like this book? Nope. It's a very internal, stream-of-consciousness, character-driven narrative. If you are a plot-driven reader, you're probably not going to enjoy this book.

Also, the author plays with how dialogue is punctuated. (It definitely stands apart from the rest of the narrative, but it's not your usual quotation marks, either.) If you must have all your dialogue set in conventional punctuation, you probably won't like this book.

Trigger Warnings: Death of a parent
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