About the Book
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 fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.
The Review
“Writers and Lovers” is a real case of you can’t judge a book by its cover. If you walked by this book without knowing anything about Lily King’s writing style, you would think that it is traditional “chick lit”. Yes, there is a female protagonist and yes she is unlucky in love and has to make a decision about two men, but that is not what this book is about. It is about a woman in her early thirties dealing with everything from her mother’s sudden death to being the friend that is left behind. It is the story of debt notices ignored and dreams unrealized. Casey literally pedals through her life without realizing her full potential. Your job, as the reader is to see if she finally gets there.
In some ways, this book reminded me of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”. Hear me out – this is not an action/adventure story. Think back to when you read that book. The first hundred pages were a struggle but once you got through them, it was a book that you couldn’t put down. This book tells its story slowly at first and once you get past the introduction, it is something that you both want to finish in a day and wish would never end.
This is a cerebral novel, about a thinker. The character of Casey is a writer, therefore the action is really inside of her head. You feel her pain as a woman who suddenly loses her mother. Her life as a writer is beautifully explored from her trials of finishing her novel to waiting to see what will happen once she does. This moving story also showcases how grief can break you and then make you.
“Writers and Lovers” has it all. Humour, sadness, loss of self, love stories, and how a slightly immature character found herself and finally became a grown up.
Favourite Line From the Book
This line perfectly sums up Casey’s grief about her mother’s death. Anyone who has ever lost someone close to them will understand what this means.
“I wanted her and no one else to tell me the story of how she died.”
