Writers & Lovers: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802148530 ISBN 13: 9780802148537

Publisher: Grove Press, 2020

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.
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.
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.

About the Author:

Lily King is the author of the novels The Pleasing Hour, The English Teacher, Father of the Rain, and Euphoria, one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014 and winner of the Kirkus Prize. She lives in Maine.

Review:

Praise for Writers & Lovers
“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

“Gorgeous!”―Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge

Writers & Lovers is a portrait of the artist as a young woman. Lily King writes masterfully about desire and loss, creativity and inspiration, and how each overlaps and influences the other. I found myself reading slowly, underlining phrases, wanting to linger in the world of this novel. Her insights about love ― how it is elusive and ineffable ― and about grief ― how it is something that you live inside ― took my breath away.”―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

“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
Praise for Euphoria

“Taut, witty, fiercely intelligent... King is brilliant.”―New York Times Book Review
“Intense, seductive, sexual, and intellectual... There are so many exhilarating elements to savor in Euphoria... Brava to Lily King.”―San Francisco Chronicle
“As concentrated as orchid food, packing as much narrative power and intellectual energy into its 250 pages as novels triple its size.”―Newsday
“Atmospheric and sensual... An intellectually stimulating tour de force.”―NPR
Praise for Father of the Rain

“Surprising and wise...An absorbing, insightful story written in cool, polished prose right to the last conflicted line.”―Washington Post
“King is a beautiful writer, with equally strong gifts for dialogue and internal monologue.”―New York Times Book Review
“Haunting, incisive...King is brilliant.”―Elle
“An excellent novel, sensitive and perceptive.”―Chicago Tribune