Lily King

Reading Lily's book was like sitting back in a comfortable chair, relaxing with a Manhattan to sip on, and enjoying a wonderful evening with a dear friend. Her writing is like my cocktail, smooth and delicious. I thoroughly enjoyed every sentence, every character, and every chapter.

"One of our greatest writers about desire… This novel will become a defining classic for struggling young writers."
— Vulture, 32 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2020

Here is the synopsis, in part, from the Kirkus Review:

A Boston-area waitress manages debt, grief, medical troubles, and romantic complications as she finishes her novel.

“There are so many things I can’t think about in order to write in the morning,” Casey explains at the opening of Lily King’s latest. The top three are her mother’s recent death, her crushing student loans, and the married poet she recently had a steaming-hot affair with at a writer’s colony. But having seen all but one of her writer friends give up on the dream, 31-year-old Casey is determined to stick it out. After those morning hours at her desk in her teensy garage apartment, she rides her banana bike to work at a restaurant in Harvard Square—a setting the author evokes in delicious detail. Casey has no sooner resolved to forget the infidel poet than a few more writers show up on her romantic radar. She rejects a guy at a party who reveals he’s only written 11 1/2 pages in three years—“That kind of thing is contagious”—to find herself torn between a widowed novelist with two young sons and a guy with an irresistible broken tooth from the novelist's workshop.

And here are few lines from the book I particularly loved:

"It was strong, whatever was between us, like the wet air and the smell of every thing ready to bloom."

"We looked at the signatures on the wall of all the writers and artists who had stayed in my cabin. 'They all defininitely wrote more in here than I have,' I said. 'But I think I'm in the running for the most orgasms.'"

"I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mix the two up in a terrible tangle that's hard to unravel."

"In the margins Murial has written, 'Linger here' or 'Let us feel this', and I try to stay and feel the moment and my understanding of it expands. Small unexpected things begin to thrum across the whole book. I feel like a conductor who is finally able to hear all the instraments at once."

"There's a particular feeling in your body when something goes right after a long time of things going wrong. It feels warm and sweet and loose. I feel all that as I hold the schedule and listen to Manolo talk about W-4s and the study hall schedule and my mailbox combination and faculty parking. For a moment all the bees have turned to honey."

"'I've let the other houses know we're receiving offers. Some of them had blown it off, and now they're speed reading.' She guffaws. She is giddy, in her own way. 'You there? Your book is going to be bound and sold, Camila. We're in aution. Start practicing your signature.'"

That last sentence is the one that all first time authors would LOVE to hear.

Here is my interview with Lily where we learn about an unfortunate stumble.

Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.

I live in Portland, Maine. 

It’s a small, open-minded city with a dynamic, growing immigrant and refugee population. It’s full of writers and we have a strong, tight literary community. I’m involved with a writing nonprofit called The Telling Room which offers classes for kids to explore their creativity and passion for language.

Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?

I was living in Manchester, Massachusetts with my parents and my two older siblings. 

I have very few memories of being that age, of living with both parents. 

9 year old Lily

They divorced a few years later and that’s when the memories kick in. I do remember going to the library and to the bookstore and the great pleasure of new books to read in my room. I loved paper and pens and letter writing, too.

Is there a book that when you read it, changed the way you look at life?

I think when I read Judy Blume’s It’s Not the End of the World when I was nine or ten I realized that just regular life and regular people without extra powers could be interesting, and the subjects of novels. 

That changed me. It made me want to write books, too.

Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?

My favorite book as a child, and my favorite book to read to my kids, was Corduroy. 

It’s about a stuffed bear finding a home. The drawings are so expressive, Corduroy’s ache to be loved and cared for so beautifully rendered. I cannot get through it without tears.

What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?

My mother used to love to tell the story of me getting all ready for a fundraiser she was hosting for Michael Harrington, who was running for congress, when I was five or six. I’d put on new shoes and my nicest dress and when she called me down to meet him, I slipped down a flight of carpeted stairs and landed in a heap at his feet.  

How did you meet your husband, Tyler? How did your first date go?

I met Tyler at a friend’s house in Belmont, Mass. It was kind of a set-up. She went upstairs to take a long phone call and we just sat in the kitchen and got into a conversation about our families. He was so thoughtful and honest and perceptive about his family dynamics that I was impressed. Then the friend came back and we went into the living room with beers and it was awkward. The first real date was great.

It was a Sunday and we had brunch and went to an art museum and I thought he was very sexy and very quirky, just what I like.

Is there a song that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?

I’m going through a massive Lori McKenna phase, which I often am, and right now I’m obsessed 

with “The Time I’ve Wasted.” 
I love her at all times, up, down, and all the in-betweens.

How are you different now than you were in your 20’s?

In terms of writing, I don’t listen anymore to the voice that says I can’t do that. Now I get an idea that

seems complicated and daunting and I think, I might not be able to do that but I’m going to give it a try. And in terms of my life in general, I think I’m calmer, less easily rattled, less frequently wounded, better able to see things from 30,000 feet up. 

Thinking of how some of your characters like to spend their time, how does this sound for a date?

Miniature Golf, Cowboy Junkies music, Chess and a David Byrne concert.

With the right guy it would be heaven. 

https://groveatlantic.com/book/yellow-house-the/

And in a short essay…………………………

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME

to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,

be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,

actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,

meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.

When would you go?

Where would you go?

Who would you want to meet?

And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?

I would go to England around 1922 as a dear friend of Virginia Woolf and be there for the writing of Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse and The Waves and The Years.

Virginia Woolf

Vanessa Bell

Katherine Mansfield

        

I’d love to hang out at the parties and teas and meetings, listen in on her conversations with her sister Vanessa Bell and Katherine Mansfield  

E. M. Forrester

and E.M. Forster and then, when the Nazis starting bombing London in 1940, I’d get her and Leonard out of the country and she would not witness the destruction or feel the despair that brought on another bout of madness, but go on to write and thrive for many more decades.

Thank you Lily, not for just writing such a satisfying book to read but also for telling us a little bit about who you are.

Readers, be sure to pick up a copy of Writers and Lovers at your local independent bookstore.
Other wonderful books from Lily King, all published by Grove/Atlantic: