Rating: 89% | B+ | ★★★★ Warnings: + Sexual content Synopsis (from Goodreads): Blindsided by her mother's sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she's been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey's fight to fulfil her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink. Writers & Lovers follows Casey--a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist--in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King's trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. Spoiler-Free Review: I've reviewed some of Lily King's writing in the past, specifically her forthcoming collection of short stories, Five Tuesdays in Winter. To put it mildly, I was not a fan. But Writers & Lovers is completely disparate from Five Tuesdays in Winter. It has what Five Tuesdays in Winter lacks—genuine anchoring of highly developed characters in a world with personal stakes. This novel is sure to strike (a little too) close to home for the aspiring writer in your life, or for your local book review blogger hosting a blog with a punny French name. Writers & Lovers is a literary novel in every sense of the phrase; King demands perfect attention to not only the protagonist, Casey, but also to the subtleties in the writing style and plot arc. The story is slow but insistent, particularly because of its meta status as a novel about writing a novel. King's ability to develop complexly unlikeable characters is stunning, as is her ability to strike at the heart with rich descriptions of grief, love, and hope. Writers & Lovers is gritty in its own way, and is not quite the heartfelt, optimistic novel many people have characterized it as, but it's certainly worth a read for its realism. This novel feels deeply personal on two levels: one, as it connects to Casey's identity as a writer and two, as it connects to Casey's status as a thirty-something mired in the sludge of everyday life. Buy Writers & Lovers for the writer in your life, and be there to love them when they finish the novel. They will need you. (Click "Read More" for the full review with spoilers!) Plot (25/30) Beginning (7/10), Middle (10/10), and End (8/10) Writers & Lovers starts out slowly, and sadly, as someone who has started to use binge sessions of fast-paced romance novels as a crutch for the slog of everyday life, it took me a few chapters to really ease myself into the groove of Casey's inner monologue and situation. The exposition in this novel is long—it feels as though Casey insists on holding the reader's hand through extended explanations of her previous romantic relationships, her mother's death, and her waitressing. Most of the exposition, I would say, is not vital to the story, though it does allow the reader to acclimate to Casey's voice and view on life. As Casey meets Silas and Oscar, the story begins to ramp up. Casey finds herself pulled in all directions—towards her romance with Oscar, towards her hated waitressing job, towards her irritating and very likely malicious landlord. But what is ultimately the most beautiful about Writers & Lovers is Casey's observations on life, and how organic the story feels because it is simply one woman living her life and addressing all of the difficulties that accompany the process of living. King's objective is not to produce a guide to writing, or a crash course on what the publishing process looks like (although Writers & Lovers did introduce me to what actually occurs when writers query and what occurs during the editor-writer editing process); rather, it's to elaborate on what occurs in a writer's life aside from writing. This novel is much less about a struggling writer than it is—simply—about the life of a woman caught between phases of life, and through that lens King achieves a highly three-dimensional story and protagonist. I'm both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person. That being said, I did feel a kinship with any passage about writing. There is nothing quite like being understood (in the least not-like-other-girls way possible, please), writer to writer. Writing often feels like a mystical art (again, in the least romanticized way possible), subject to various fits of coming-and-going inspiration. But sometimes the writer gets it right, the universe gets it write (written), and I've thought about this particular passage for weeks now: I'm halfway across the BU Bridge before I realize I'm finishing that scene in my head. They're talking and I can hear them and they're finally going down the stairs. If the beginning of the novel is too slow, then the end of the novel is too rushed. Everything seems to fall too neatly into place for Casey, even though the reader certainly wants to see her succeed. Still, when everything—the book deal, the teaching job, the (presumably pure, true, etc.) romance with Silas—coalesces into a happy ending, it almost feels insincere. Characters (26/30) Development (12/15) and Allure (14/15) Again, King has a magnificent ability to make the most unlikeable characters compelling. Oscar—sweet, then problematic, then downright terrible Oscar—had me scratching my head until the very end, torn between wanting Casey to have a happy ending and being unable to deny Oscar's uncomfortable aura. In contrast, Silas is a complete mystery, and his absence from most of the novel makes his happily ever after with Casey all the more confusing. Instead, the most likable character in this novel aside from Casey is Muriel, Casey's biggest supporter. This novel is, at least partially, about women writers, and Muriel provides a much-needed counterbalance to the odious Oscar. She is honest without being abrasive and produces much of the novel's optimism and warmth. Casey's path intersects with myriad characters in this novel; her tangled path with Muriel was the only one that clung to me. Writing (20/20) Descriptions (10/10) and Flow (10/10) It would be slightly heretical for a novel called Writers & Lovers and dependent on chronicling a writer's journey to have bad writing; luckily, that's not even remotely an issue. King's writing shines because of its cohesion; in the other literary fiction novels that compose my library, I find protagonists who are witty and make unique observations out of the blue, but not very many protagonists who make observations that are both witty and add to the plot's cohesion. Casey's observations do both of those things; she is observant and honest without demanding to be heard. There is an understated simplicity to the writing in this novel, an unshakeable feeling that there is strength in quotidian actions and in the smallest of human actions. I wanted her and no one else to tell me the story of how she died. Closure/Set-Up (18/20)
Logic (8/10) and Allure/Closure (10/10) As I discussed above, the ending of Writers & Lovers is a tad too quick and neat for me to be fully satisfied. Logically, it jumps the shark. However, in terms of providing closure for Casey and fulfilling the reader's desire to see Casey happy, it does just that. And for that reason it is a lovely ending, a quiet moment that caps off a quietly impactful novel.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
ReviewsNora Goes Off Script
How to Fake It in Hollywood Writers & Lovers The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels The Idiot The Wedding Season The Roughest Draft The View Was Exhausting Just Like Magic Slouching Towards Bethlehem My Mechanical Romance Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty The Evening Hero |