The latest novel from a beautifully distinctive voice in contemporary fiction captures an endearing, multi-faceted drifter at an emotional crossroads.
Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for February 2021
Casey has ended up back in Massachusetts after a devastating love affair. Her mother has just died and she is knocked sideways by grief and loneliness, moving between the restaurant where she waitresses for the Harvard elite and the rented shed she calls home. Her one constant is the novel she has been writing for six years, but at thirty-one she is in debt and directionless, and feels too old to be that way - it's strange, not be the youngest kind of adult anymore.
And then, one evening, she meets Silas. He is kind, handsome, interested. But only a few weeks later, Oscar walks into her restaurant, his two boys in tow. He is older, grieving the loss of his wife, and wrapped up in his own creativity. Suddenly Casey finds herself at the point of a love triangle, torn between two very different relationships that promise two very different futures.
Lily King's Writers & Lovers follows Casey in the last days of a long youth, a time when everything - her family, her work, her relationships - comes to a crisis. Hugely moving and impossibly funny, it is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. It is a novel about love and creativity, and ultimately it captures the moment when a woman becomes an artist.
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 9781529033137
Number of pages: 336
Weight: 240 g
Dimensions: 197 x 129 x 20 mm
Lily King is one of our great literary treasures and Writers & Lovers is suffused with her brilliance. It is captivating, potent, incisive, and wise, a moving story of grief, and recovering from grief, and of a young woman finding her courage for life - Madeline Miller, author of Circe
Exquisite . . . a warm and buoyant romance - Book of the Week, Sunday Telegraph
Writers & Lovers made me happy . . . suffused with hopefulness and kindness. Lily King writes with a great generosity of spirit. - Ann Patchett
A wry and perceptive coming-of-age story - Hannah Beckerman, Observer
A novel with the broad embrace of a 1990s Richard Curtis film . . . There’s romance, there’s a moral journey and there are characters with amusing foibles. - Sunday Times
I loved this book from the first paragraph . . . honest and riveting and insightful about creativity and life. - Curtis Sittenfeld
Delightful . . . warm, funny and sharply observed . . . an affecting, uplifting exploration of the risks and rewards of opening up - Daily Mail
My favourite of Lily King's books so far. Exuberant and affirming, it's funny and immensely clever, emotionally rare and strong. I feel bereft now I've finished - Tessa Hadley, author of Late in The Day
Unflinching and ultimately buoyant in its depiction of the courage and grit required to stay creative, this is essential reading for any aspiring author - Mail on Sunday
Gorgeous - Elizabeth Strout, author of My Name is Lucy Barton
This smooth, deliberate chronicle of creation keeps the men in their place and Casey firmly rooted at the center of her own story. - Los Angeles Times
King has created . . . someone akin to Sally Rooney’s Frances in Conversations with Friends - Boston Globe
A knowing look at the pursuit of a life in the arts, with a protagonist you’ll root for. - Marie Claire
A comic and compassionate novel . . . With wit and what reads like deep insider wisdom, Ms. King captures the chronic low-level panic of taking a leap into the artsy unknown and finding yourself adrift, without land or rescue in sight. - Maureen Corrigan, Wall Street Journal
This novel will become a defining classic for struggling young writers. - Vulture
Intimate and vulnerable . . . Lily King’s novel follows a deeply relatable protagonist navigating a whole menu of crises surrounded by a cast of genuine, vivid characters . . . The book occupies a small space, but packs it to the brim with humanity. - Entertainment Weekly
Lily King writes masterfully about desire and loss, creativity and inspiration, and how each overlaps and influences the other - Christina Baker Kline, author of A Peace of the World
Writers & Lovers stole my heart from its first pages. I am in love with this book. In. Love. This deep dive of a novel will stay with me forever - Elin Hilderbrand, author of Summer of ‘69
A vivid, funny and altogether real look at what living a creative life means for a woman - Elle Magazine (USA)
Romantic and funny, this smart, witty book takes a wonderfully life-affirming look at love, literature and second chances. - Daily Express
A smart, witty book - Daily Mirror
Witty and affecting, Writers & Lovers explores where grit can get you, even when everything appears to be falling apart. - i newspaper
If you like smart, acerbic but ultimately life-affirming fiction, you’ll love it - Stylist
Infused with tenderness and wry wit in equal measure, Writers & Lovers is King’s best book yet. - Irish Times
Puzzling and beautiful . . . Reading the book feels like waiting for clouds to break – a kind of gorgeous agony - Guardian
Smart, funny and a breeze to read - Metro
King’s writing is spirited, clever and funny, and her novel is better than most others you’ll read this year. - Evening Standard
This book!!! I beg you to read it, I love it madly! It's touching and clever and the main character is so loveable! - Marian Keyes
Wise, witty and generous-spirited . . . She’s brilliant on the trials and tribulations of restaurant workers and the struggles of aspiring writers, complete with rejection letters and constant doubt that their novels are any good - Independent.co.uk
A wry and funny account of a thirtysomething’s struggles to become a novelist that deliciously sends up puffed-up male writerly egos along its way - Sunday Times
Smart, funny . . . somehow combining a crowd-pleasing literary romcom with a portrait of devastating grief. I loved its beautiful writing and light, intelligent handling of human fragility. - Clare Carlisle, TLS Books of the Year
Dangerously romantic, bold and fearless enough to imagine the possibility of unbounded happiness . . . this story of a grieving, struggling writer torn between two suitors delivers such pure joy that there may be no surer antidote to 2020’s woes. - Washington Post, Best Books of 2020
Romance, humour, a touch of tragedy, Writers & Lovers has what you want from a good, involving read - The Times, Best fiction books of the year 2020
King’s tender, romantic novel is an uplifting account of loss, literature and the redeeming power of love - Daily Mail
It deals with grief in a way that makes you feel as if your hand is being held - Daily Express
Casey is a wonderful character, an inspiring novelist dreaming of being published, working as a waitress to earn money, grieving the loss of her mother and no luck on the boyfriend front either. Then she meets not one... More
3.5* Casey really wants to make it as a writer. This is her dream. She has spent a lot of time jotting notes and rewriting. Her friends are getting married, while she is worrying about her student loan and working as... More
A perfectly observed novel with all the witty repartee of Nora Ephron's Heartburn and the bittersweet insight of Elizabeth Strout's My Name Is Luctty Barton.
Her portrayal of Casey's grief for her...
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