Writers & Lovers

Writers & Lovers: A Novel
Lily King
Grove Press (March 3, 2020), 320 pages
Kindle edition $12.99, Amazon hardcover $16.20

Lily King’s new novel Writers & Lovers is written in the first person. The protagonist and narrator Casey at age 31 is trying to finish her novel after six years of fits and starts, attempting to make a living as a waitress, and trying to pay off her past-due student loans.

Casey seems quite competent as a waitress at an upscale restaurant to which she commutes by bicycle from her living space, a garden shed turned cottage next to her landlord’s house, but her manager puts her on probation twice for reasons that don’t seem to be entirely fair. She becomes involved with a writer her own age and also with an established author, widowed with two young sons, sixteen years her senior. She has a past: her high school coach father retired in shame after some sleazy activity in the locker room and her mother ran off to Mexico with another man and later died there mysteriously.

The story takes place in the early 1990’s, with occasional passing references to the likes of Whitewater special counsel Ken Starr. Casey has an answering machine rather than voicemail and no one seems to have a cell phone. Nonetheless this is not a period piece by any means; it could just as easily be set in 2020.

The writing is lively and King keeps the story moving at a rapid clip. There is one incident towards the end of the book involving Casey’s brother and her landlord that seems to serve no purpose, and we never learn the circumstances of her mother’s death, but otherwise the story holds together well. The final scene is a bit quirky, but it does its job in offering a solid conclusion. The ending is not open-ended, leaving us adrift, as is the case with many novels.

I don’t know if Writers & Lovers qualifies as literary fiction, but it is certainly a highly readable novel.