“Writers & Lovers” by Lily King – Hurdles of the Creative Life
It follows the story of Casey Peabody, a thirty-one year-old artist who arrives in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 with plenty of debts to her name and not much of a plan to go forward. The only thing she knows is she remains determined to live a creative life, a dream all her friends abandoned long ago.
Lily King and her Directionless Artist
Living a life centred on art and creativity is something many people aspire to at one point or another, but very few actually manage to make possible. As most of us learn the more we get into it, creating any kind of art other people will enjoy is, in fact, quite hard... and not even to mention all the hassles which come with promotion, publication, and anything related to gaining some exposition.
Many people abandon the dream early on in their lives, but Casey Peabody isn't one of them, the protagonist of Lily King's second novel, Writers & Lovers.
Transporting us to the summer of 1997 is Massachusetts, we make Casey's acquaintance, fresh off the boat of life's great misfortunes. On top of her mother having recently and suddenly passed away, her latest love affair has left her in shambles, and all she has to her name are some debts, wedding invitations, and the novel she has been writing for six years now.
Despite being thirty-one years old, she hasn't given up on the dream of living an artist's life (unlike all her friends)... if only she knew what this would entail.
In her determination to finish her novel and grasp at the last remaining straws of her youth, Casey ends up meeting two very different men, whom she naturally falls in love with at the same time, fracturing her world even more than it already was.
With only questions and uncertainty looming over her future, Casey finds herself in a fight for her own destiny... to fulfill her creative ambitions and perhaps somehow, find a place for herself in a hectic and unforgiving world which constantly pushes her closer to the edge.
The Uncertainties of Adulthood in Writers & Lovers
To begin with, just in case it wasn't already clear enough, Writers & Lovers is far from being a fast-paced or action packed novel. I can't really say there are any huge world-shattering twists, nor does it try to keep you glued to the page in anticipation of what's going to happen next.
On the contrary, it lies on the other side of the spectrum, taking its time to explore the grey and muddled reality Casey is constantly facing, a state of being I think most of us can relate to in one way or another.
In my opinion, the core of the story revolves around exploring a relatively recent and increasingly widespread phenomenon of having an essentially non-established life in one's late twenties and early thirties. Casey doesn't have a stable relationship, no children, no place she can truly call home, no tangible profession, only a mountain of student debts and grief.
What I particularly enjoyed was how King didn't necessarily portray it in a depressing or overly negative manner, simply accepting it as a reality of the modern world we need to learn how to deal with, which is precisely what Casey ends up doing over the course of the novel.
King is quite good at making note of all the little details and pitfalls of Casey's journey, truly giving the impression of someone who once walked this path of uncertainty herself. It's both interesting and uplifting to see Casey forging herself into a more complete human being, consistently finding ways not to necessarily even solve her problems, but simply deal with them, as we often tend to do.
Slowly but surely, and even painfully, she learns to accept and overcome some of life's unsolvable problems, and for me this gave the novel a realistic character which made it resonate quite profoundly with the real world.
A Literary Adventure
As I mentioned it above, this novel moves along at a relatively slow pace, largely because its advancement is based on two specific things: character development and the craft of literature.
To start with the former, from the moment we make Casey's acquaintance it felt to me like we never stopped learning more about her, with her inner world proving increasingly rich and complex as the plot moves onward.
She always comes off as realistic and relatable, even when it comes to the more questionable decisions she sometimes makes. Whether she's being good, bad, or ineffective, we understand the motivation behind her thoughts and actions, which made it easy for me to get invested in her development.
There is also a good cast of supporting characters to speak of, mainly in the form of of Casey's friends and the men she falls in love with. Though they obviously feel somewhat less fleshed out and developed than our protagonist, it's an understandable decision and in my opinion they have enough depth as it is for the roles they are meant to fulfill.
In some ways, I almost had the impression of them being windows into the overarching categories any of us can end up in through life.
As far as the literary elements are concerned, King writes quite a bit about the art of, well, writing a novel, and the countless difficulties which arise with it. I can understand how the passages focused on literary elements aren't exactly for everyone, but generally-speaking they are brief and to the point, never bringing the progress of the plot to a grinding halt.
The Final Verdict
Writers & Lovers by Lily King is a fairly slow-paced novel focusing largely on character development, centred on the innumerable uncertainties and pitfalls of adulthood in the modern world.
If you enjoy contemporary fiction novels which take their time to explore the realistic worlds of their inner characters, then I believe you are bound to enjoy this one a fair bit.
 | Lily KingPersonal site Lily King is an American novelist who studied at both the University of North Carolina and the Syracuse University. She wrote numerous novels including The Pleasing Hour, The English Teacher, and Father of the Rain. She was the recipient of the Raymond Carver Prize for Fiction, the 2000 Whiting Writers'award, and is a MacDowell Colony fellow. |
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