58 pages • 1 hour read
Lily KingWriters and Lovers
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Struggling Boston writer Casey Kasem meets with Adam, her landlord and a former college peer of her brother Caleb’s, in his driveway as she walks his dog in the morning. He asks her how her novel is coming along, and she tells him that she’s a couple hundred pages in but has to work a double shift, leaving little time for writing. Casey spends some time working on her novel, then gets herself ready for work. She rides her bicycle through Boston with the college students, admiring the geese and thinking of her mother, who recently passed away.
The restaurant Casey works at is a high-end establishment called Iris. Casey navigates the competitive social dynamics between the servers while trying to make as much money as she can during the lunch rush. In the interim between lunch and dinner shifts, Casey brings her tip earnings from lunch to her bank. She lines up at the teller to deposit the cash into her account, and the teller reminds her that it’s faster for her to deposit using the ATM. Casey is careful with her money; her student loan debt doubled while she was living abroad, and whatever little money she earns goes to student loan debt collectors. Casey’s debt is so deep that she knows she will never get out of it. But the debt collection and refinancing schemes have created a financial situation in which she can neither repay her debt, nor hold on to any of the little money she makes at the restaurant.
The encounter at the bank makes Casey weep, so she goes to Salvatore’s Foreign Books to comfort herself with the literature and languages. The store brings back happy memories for Casey, reminding her of a time when she worked at the store and lived in a rented house with her fellow writer friends. She reflects on where those writer friends are now, and how many of them have given up their writing dreams for more stable careers and typical marriages.
As Casey peruses the Ancient Greek section, a language she would like to learn, she remembers her time spent working in this store. She thinks fondly of restacking the shelves with her friend Maria and drifts into memories of meeting Paco, a former lover, when he came in looking for a book. Casey doesn’t linger on her memories with Paco; instead, she floats back to thoughts of visiting her mother in Phoenix during those younger days when financial and emotional responsibilities didn’t burden her.
Casey leaves the bookstore to return to the restaurant for her dinner shift. But Casey’s familiar routine is interrupted when two clients who once knew her mother, Liz and Pat Doyle, request to sit in her section. They express their sympathy for the passing of Casey’s mother, and Liz points to the turquoise necklace she is wearing, a gift from Casey’s mother. Casey avoids them as best she can and is relieved as the last patrons leave for the night.
At one in the morning, Casey finally begins her bicycle ride back to her rented home, Adam’s small potting shed. As she cycles with the light of the moon, Casey remembers Luke, a former lover. She realizes that “[i]n the morning I ache for my mother. But late at night it is Luke I mourn for” (60). When Casey gets to the shed, a red light on her voice machine sends her into a spiral of anxiety, and she tells herself that it can’t be “him.”
Chapter 2 Summary
In a flashback that takes place six weeks after her mother died, Casey moves to Rhode Island for a writer’s residency called Red Barn. At Red Barn she meets Luke, a poet. They quickly develop a romantic and sexual relationship, and Casey is surprised to find how deeply she falls for Luke so quickly after her mother’s death. Casey unexpectedly lets her guard down with Luke, and she shares more with him than any man before. She talks to him about her mother freely, and “believed she’d sent him to me, a gift to help me through” (69). While Casey is open but struggling to write, Luke is more secretive and gets a lot of writing done. He mentions to Casey one night that he was once a husband and a father, but they lost the child. Casey doesn’t pry, but when they take a drive to visit Luke’s friend Matt, the past catches up to them.
Matt and his wife Jen live in an idyllic country house with their two children and hives of bees. It becomes clear to Casey early on that Matt and Jen didn’t know that Casey was coming or even who Casey was. Casey realizes, “They were kind people doing their best to be welcoming, but they did not want me there and I didn’t know why” (76). She suspects it has something to do with the awkwardness of Luke’s dead child, and later when they’re alone, Luke tells Casey that his daughter Charlotte died when she was four months old. The next day, Luke is distant, concluding that what’s happening between him and Casey is actually bad and unbalanced. Although Luke’s new attitude confuses Casey, they continue to sleep together as if the conversation had never happened.
Casey’s time at Red Barn comes to its end. Caleb calls her to let her know that his friend Adam will rent her a room in Brookline, just outside Boston. Casey hasn’t written anything of substance all summer, but Luke has written so much deep poetry that he gets a standing ovation at his poetry reading. He says goodbye to Casey with a phone number that is never answered. After he is gone, Casey discovers from a fellow artist-in-residence who knew him in New York that Luke is still married.
Chapter 3 Summary
Casey is back in present-day Boston, with Luke’s voice on the other end of her phone. He wants to see her, and despite her nerves she feels she must meet him. He drives her to Concord and tries to explain to her that he’s only married on paper, and that both he and his wife have had relationships with other people. They spend an awkward afternoon by Walden Pond, with Luke advancing on Casey and Casey fighting her desire to be with him again. As they drive back to Boston, Casey recognizes the toxicity of her relationship with Luke. She says goodbye to him at the Sunoco station and sticks to her decision not to restart their relationship.
Chapter 4 Summary
An old writer friend of Casey’s named Muriel is back in town. Muriel brings Casey to a literary party for Oscar Kolton, a former Boston University professor who quit teaching to write full time and take care of his kids after his wife died. Oscar hosts a weekly fiction workshop in his home that Muriel has been encouraging Casey to attend. At the workshop, Casey meets Silas, one of Muriel’s friends. Silas and Casey jest over the copy of the book they’re there to celebrate, mimicking the differences in attitudes between male and female author photos.
Silas tells Casey more about the workshop. He doesn’t think that Oscar likes his writing, but Silas also doesn’t care very much. Casey ambles around the party and spots Oscar, but she doesn’t meet him. Later, as she and Muriel head back home discussing books, Casey tells Muriel that Silas says the workshops are cultish. Muriel agrees that it can feel that way, since “a lot of people there want to be Oscar, and a number of others want to sleep with him” (105). Casey and Muriel chat a bit more, and when Casey finally leaves to return to her shed, she can see the unfolding of the chapter on which she’s been stuck.
Chapter 5 Summary
Muriel tells Casey about her love life. Muriel recently split up with her boyfriend David of three years and even more recently met someone new, but now David wants back in the picture. Muriel tells Casey that Silas asked for her number, and Silas calls Casey the next morning. He asks her out on a date, and while still on the phone they suddenly start talking about Casey’s dead mother and Silas’s dead sister.
Later, Muriel meets up with Casey to tell her about her walk with her ex-boyfriend. Distraught but inspired, Muriel realizes that she doesn’t want David back and that her writing has flourished since the split.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
Literary fiction tends to prioritize character development over plot, and Lily King’s Writers & Lovers abides by this staple of the genre. The book is told through the first-person narrative of Casey Kasem, a struggling writer who is going through a crisis of creativity and love. Although the narrative structure is not quite stream-of-consciousness, the reader experiences the world as Casey sees it, and when her thoughts float from her memories to the present, the reader travels through Casey’s psyche. This allows the reader to feel connected to Casey, to judge the other characters through her eyes, and to feel her desires. To make this a successful foray into the mind of a narrator, King uses incredibly acute details in her portrayal of Casey’s world. Via Casey, King notices tiny but significant details about people, places, and things. This mimics the specific way in which individual humans experience their world but can rarely express their feelings about it so eloquently. This attention to detail emphasizes Casey’s identity as a writer who can experience those tiny moments with a sophisticated vocabulary that sparks familiarity. In so doing, though this is a piece of fiction, the reader is invited to see Casey as a semi-autobiographical representation of the author.
Meanwhile, Casey develops her own novel’s protagonist through a new, profoundly sad chapter of her life. Not quite the young woman she used to be but by no accounts old, Casey watches people steadily leave her life. Her mother dies, leaving a significant hole of grief; most of her writer friends quit that lifestyle and move into secure professions and typical marriages; the men Casey meets and falls in love with consistently lead her to heartbreak. Casey’s alone-ness is constantly emphasized through the first five chapters of the novel. She is alone literally in that her mother is dead, she lives alone, and she has little social life. She is also metaphorically alone—alone with the stress of her intense student debts, alone with her hopelessness, and alone with her writer’s block. Casey actively reflects on her loneliness and thinks deeply about people who leave her without, she believes, a second thought. Although Casey remembers everyone, she believes that her friends and former loved ones forget about her. In part, this is a ripple effect of losing the unconditional, constant love of her mother, but there is some truth to her belief. Casey’s former writer friends have children and stop calling her back. Casey’s ex-boyfriends split up with her, as in the case of her relationship with Luke. Casey even realizes in the moment that Matt and Jen, Luke’s friends, will one day soon be unable to remember her. While Casey tries to keep her life on track through her commitment to writing, her community has disintegrated around her.
While Casey thinks with profound emotion on the people she has loved, the reader gets the sense that Casey doesn’t receive the same respect, as people leave her without explanation. There is some respite from this loneliness, as is seen in her friendship with Muriel, the first relationship King portrays that is not sad or sexualized. Casey is at her most connected when she can bond with someone over their love of literature. This highlights Casey’s primary identity as writer and reader, and it also demonstrates Casey’s deep need to connect with other creative minds who can better understand her. This is further emphasized by the fact that it is Casey who reaches out to Muriel after some time apart, revealing how desperately Casey does want her friends back. King suggests that a writer’s life is necessarily solitary but also paradoxically reliant on community, which is very much highlighted when Casey wastes the Red Barn fellowship on her relationship with Luke.
The sheer stress of Casey’s life informs her thoughts as she despairs over her future finances, the absence of the comfort her mother provided, and the loneliness of her writing life. Casey describes the sensation of looking at herself in the mirror, searching for the woman she used to be. Thus, Casey experiences a second coming-of-age. Although she is an adult, she’s in a new phase of adulthood that she must learn how to navigate. There are subtle moments that glitter with hope, such as when Casey watches the geese fly or when she sees a plant thriving. The flying geese and thriving plants are metaphors for Casey’s resilience and desire to be free from the memories and problems that haunt her. This stress is compounded by her financial situation, which is further enhanced by the sense that Casey can’t quit writing for a job that would earn her enough money for a more stable life. Casey watches so many of her fellow writer friends give up writing for stability, but no matter how dire her situation becomes, she is tied to the life of an author. This life is also haunted by the issue of time, which is most notable in the constant fight between Casey and her writer’s block. Casey must confront the issue of time through the fleeting mortality of her mother, her inability to find sufficient time to write, and her emergence into her thirties which brings with it a loss of carefree youth.
