An unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman, Writers & Lovers is the novel Lily King wished she could have read as a young, struggling writer.
Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, thirty-one-year-old Casey Peabody has arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1997 without a plan beyond a determination to live a creative life. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores artistic passion, ambition, and the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phrase of life and the beginning of another.
“Writers & Lovers is dangerously romantic, bold and fearless enough to imagine the possibility of unbounded happiness…delivers such pure joy that there may be no surer antidote to 2020’s woes.” – Washington Post, 10 best books of 2020
“Some novels are simply beautiful. That’s the word you exhale as you finish them. King’s fifth novel (Writers & Lovers)…is one of them…There is nothing extraneous in the writing, just quiet dedication to shaping the story of a young woman adrift from herself. – Los Angeles Times, 10 best books of 2020
“Writers & Lovers made me happy. Even as the narrator grieves the loss of her mother and struggles to make art and keep a roof over her head, the novel is suffused with hopefulness and kindness. Lily King writes with a great generosity of spirit.” – Ann Patchett
“Writers & Lovers is exactly the book we need now. Witty and heartfelt…I could not stop reading.” – Judy Blume
