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 38-46Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 38 Summary
On the way to Oscar’s book reading at Wellesley, Oscar largely dismisses Casey’s stress over not remembering or noting down Jennifer’s feedback. He tells her agents are full of it, but Casey tries to tell him how insightful and interesting Jennifer is. When they arrive at the bookstore, the owner is flushed to meet Oscar and tells him that the writer Vera Wilde will be coming to the reading and wants to have dinner altogether afterwards. Although Oscar says he’s pleased by the idea, having known Vera for a long time, in a private conversation with Casey Oscar is jealous and upset about his book reading compared with Vera’s. While Vera filled an entire church, Oscar’s reading has six chairs at the back of a bookstore. He expresses frustration with his career, saying that at age 47—he originally told Casey he’s 45—he should be much further along. Casey is disappointed in Oscar’s anger over the book reading and his career. She realizes that she’s always dated men who, very much like her father, believed they were owed greatness. Casey knows ambitious women, but those women don’t have the same sense of entitlement as the men she has known. But when Oscar starts his reading to a full room, Casey notices that “[h]e takes long pauses between his sentences, giving the audience the sense that he is bashful, that appearing in public is difficult for him, that he never expected to have to do this” (Page 347). During his reading, Casey feels her anxiety start to close in on her, and she narrowly avoids a public panic attack. After the reading, Oscar greets Vera and they, along with Annie the bookstore owner, go to dinner.
At dinner, Casey and Vera talk about the authors they love, and Casey tells her about her own novel. Vera seems genuinely interested and connects with Casey over the loss of her mother and the difficulty of writing through that. Vera asks Oscar if he’s read Casey’s novel, but he says she won’t let him, even though Casey knows he’s never asked.
After the dinner, Casey raves about Vera, but Oscar says he’s always found her difficult and rigid. They argue about Vera when Casey gets offended on her behalf. Although they have always been friends and Vera is a good writer and a vibrant person, Oscar hasn’t thought about dating her. He tries to explain that there is simply a quality about Vera missing, but Casey knows it’s because Vera is more successful than him.
Oscar’s house is empty; John and Jasper are with their grandmother so Oscar and Casey can spend the night together. It’s the first time they have sex, and Casey is surprised by how cold she finds Oscar. The sex is not good for Casey, but Oscar tells her he feels like a teenager again. He goes to sleep right away, but Casey—as usual—can’t. She wanders around his house and finds a story written by Silas in the recycling bin. Oscar hasn’t made any marks on it, but Casey is hypnotized by it. Silas’s story is about Star, a woman who is trying to prevent an important tree where her ex-husband first proposed to her from getting chopped down in the town center. Instead of returning it to the recycling bin, Casey keeps it because it’s the first thing she’s been able to read in a long time.
Chapter 39 Summary
Chapter 40 Summary
Casey looks in the Classifieds for an apartment she can move into soon and affordably. She finds a basement apartment with a proper gas stove, a refrigerator, and a little private patio. She is stunned by the apartment, and “[s]omething in my chest eases and aches at the same time” (364). The landlord is pleased by Casey’s interest in his worst apartment, but Casey is worried she still can’t afford it.
Chapter 41 Summary
Casey gets fired from Iris. She is working a particularly busy and chaotic shift at Iris when Clark comes storming out of the kitchen into the dining room to yell at her for missing an order. He grabs her and she yells at him to stop touching her. Casey leaves the dining room, feeling a panic attack coming on. When she sees Marcus, she tells him she’s leaving, knowing already that he was going to send her home. She pauses in the bathroom and sees two little girls hiding out. On her way out of the restaurant she thinks about how much she wants little girls, regretting not making a follow-up appointment with the gynecologist. At home, Casey unplugs the phone so no one can reach her. She reflects on how miserable men have made her and how they’ve continuously imploded her life, starting with her father. Then she thinks about her mother and how much she misses and needs her. Before going to bed, Casey tries to control her emotions outside the shed but ends up going to bed waiting through her angry breakdown.
Chapter 42 Summary
Casey tells Oscar about losing her job. Since that means she’s free on the weekend, he asks if she can stay with John and Jasper while he’s away for a couple of days. She asks him how much he usually pays a babysitter and agrees to do it. Although Oscar is surprised that he needs to pay his girlfriend to babysit his children, he leaves Casey a nice poem on the fridge asking her to stay in the house forever.
That Friday, Casey picks John and Jasper up from the school bus stop. They enjoy snacks together and play games. After helping the boys with their bath, they prepare for reading and bed. Casey sees a picture of Sonya, their dead mother, and she tells them that she lost her mother too. Jasper shows Casey John’s journal, and Casey is impressed by how much John has written. He tells her he’s not really a writer like his dad; he just likes to try to remember things. Then, they all go to Oscar’s bed to read. Casey sings the boys two songs each as they go to sleep.
Casey finally falls asleep around 4 and is woken by Jasper at 5. He crawls into bed with her, and they chat about a boy in his class, popsicles, and favorite places to swim. Jasper plays with Casey’s hands and tells her he doesn’t remember his mother. Casey tells him his mom was probably a lot like him, and that the love Sonya had for Jasper doesn’t ever go away.
Casey spends the weekend entertaining the boys, and she contemplates living this kind of life full time. When Oscar comes home on Sunday evening, the boys excitedly tell him everything about their weekend. Casey starts to feel nervous about Oscar because he is withdrawn and doesn’t speak to her. Casey tries to leave right after dinner, but Oscar stops her in the driveway. He apologizes for being cold and distant, as if he’s heard it many times before. He says he can get jealous of the boys’ diverted attention. He also tells Casey that he read a story she published years ago in the Kenyon Review. Casey tells Oscar to give the boys another hug for her and leaves.
Chapter 43 Summary
Muriel passes Casey’s number on to a friend of hers who teaches at a unique private school that needs an English teacher. The head of the department, Manolo Parker, calls Casey for an interview. Muriel lends Casey clothes, makeup, and her car, and Casey goes into the interview the day before her oncologist appointment. Manolo brings Casey through the hallways to a whole-school assembly. The 7th to 12th grade school was originally founded by local suffragettes and revived by an anonymous donor who made sure the school’s admission process would not only cater to the wealthy. Casey watches the head of the school, Aisha Jain, stand up at the microphone. Aisha begins to recite a poem, and two students in the crowd name the title and poet, winning a free treat at the snack bar. Students line up to make announcements about the day’s schedule, then the math department performs three songs to huge applause.
After the morning assembly, Manolo walks Casey around and tells her that Aisha’s main quality she’s looking for in a teacher candidate is happiness. Manolo leads Casey to Aisha’s office before heading off to teach his first class. The receptionist shows Casey into the office, where Aisha is sitting casually in a green wing chair. Aisha notices Casey is amused by something, so Casey tells her about a book called Woodcutters by an Austrian author named Thomas Bernhard in which the narrator ruminates about life and art in a wing chair. They talk some more about reading, and Casey talks about how writing helped her to read with more enthusiasm. Now that she understands how to recreate worlds using words, she experiences books more than she analyzes them, which is how she was taught in high school. Aisha asks what Casey would do differently in her own classroom, and Casey says she would use freewriting to help keep students feeling through texts, instead of analyzing larger themes. Aisha says she appreciates Casey’s approach, but that there’s also the reality of preparing students for SAT and AP tests, which Casey interprets as essentially saying she didn’t get the job. As Casey drives home, she reflects back on all the ways her interviews went wrong and everything she didn’t tell Aisha and Manolo about her teaching experiences.
After dropping off Muriel’s car, Casey starts her long walk back home. She stops at Au Bon Pain for a sandwich and runs into Silas. He pays for her sandwich and they sit together, both unable to eat. Casey can’t help but tell Silas about getting fired, the job interview at the school, and the lump on her armpit. She wants to tell him about reading his story but doesn’t want him to know about her and Oscar. Casey tries to show Silas what she does when everything feels like it’s closing in on her, and doing the muscle clenching with him in public lightens her mood. Silas shows Casey his version of muscle clenching: chess. They play by a park, and Silas coaches Casey through a famous play. They walk and eventually get to Silas’s car. Casey asks him why he didn’t kiss her on their last date. He tells her that that day, he had felt the ease between them dissipate, as though Casey was out of reach. Then, when Silas was at Oscar’s house for their fiction workshop, he overheard one of Oscar’s kids talk about his dad’s girlfriend named Casey. Silas explains trying to call Casey to find out if it was true, and when she didn’t call back, he assumed it was. She asks Silas if they can get together again and he tells her no, because he can’t get tangled up.
Chapter 44 Summary
Muriel and Harry go to the oncologist to support Casey. She’s nervous and reflective about her life. The oncologist examines Casey’s lump and tells her that it’s just a normal lymph node.
Chapter 45 Summary
Oscar and Silas both leave messages on Casey’s machine. Silas wants to know how the oncologist appointment went, and Oscar wants to know when he’ll see Casey next. She calls Silas and leaves a message letting him know she’s fine, then she calls Caleb. Caleb tells her he’s coming to visit and that he’ll stay in Adam’s guest room. He also tells her he needs to clear his head, which worries her. Nevertheless, Casey is thrilled that he’s coming.
When Caleb arrives, the siblings both find each other in states of anxiety. Casey tells him how she’s not sleeping, and he explains that she probably still has insurance and should go see a therapist. Then, Caleb shows Casey a tin box in which half of their mother’s ashes remain. They put half of the ashes into the air at the spot where their mother had spread some of Javier’s ashes, and now they want to put the last half into the Atlantic. Caleb always has a friend come, which Casey doesn’t appreciate but Caleb needs.
Chapter 46 Summary
Casey tells Caleb about Oscar and how he’s called every day since the weekend he came home in a bad mood. Caleb tells her to invite him to dinner, so she, Oscar, Caleb, and Adam all dine at Adam’s house, who turns out to be a fan of Oscar’s work. Caleb proposes a toast to Casey’s armpit, and she quickly tells Oscar she had had a lump but that it’s nothing. Adam tells Casey that he hasn’t received any offers he likes for the property, so she can stay for a while longer. Caleb and Oscar talk about Thunder Road, and Casey mimics the time Adam told her he found it extraordinary that she thought she had something to say. When she says it at dinner, it comes out sounding angrier than she had intended, and Adam denies saying it. After dinner, Casey walks Oscar to his car. Oscar is feeling good, buoyed by the positive attention of Caleb and Adam. Then, Casey tells Oscar she wants to stop seeing him. He tells her he loves her and feels good when he’s with her, and she tells him there might be someone else. Casey tells him about Silas, and Oscar proceeds to insult Silas’s age and immaturity, but he’s starting to realize that it really is over with Casey. He gives Casey one last kiss and says aloud that hers are probably the youngest lips he’ll kiss again.
Chapters 38-46 Analysis
In these chapters, Casey must confront three major challenges. The first is the issue of her mortality. Casey’s appointment with the oncologist has finally arrived, and in the moments leading up to it she thinks about how badly she wants to live. Notably absent from her internal monologue about life and death is Oscar, the boyfriend with whom she might move in. Casey doesn’t tell Oscar about the lump and is instead joined by Muriel and Harry at the appointment. When Casey finds out the lump is nothing abnormal, she’s given a second chance. Now Casey understands the importance of stability—at least enough stability to keep her in good health.
The second challenge Casey faces is losing her job at Iris. She gets fired because of Clark, yet another example in Casey’s life where she has to sacrifice something for the ego of a man. King highlights the injustice of being fired for a confrontation started by Clark through Casey’s reflections on her anger towards men. Casey believes that she doesn’t hate men; she just hates working for them, which is an apt distinction to make. Casey loves her time with men she appreciates, but she has met so many men that disappoint and use her. Casey has had to work hard to meet the expectations of men who lack empathy, starting in childhood with her father and golf. Casey turns her frustration toward these men onto herself, bringing on another panic attack. The visceral effect of Casey’s emotions and what it does to her physically is harder to bear than her new unemployment. Before she gets fired, Casey is caught in a self-destructive cycle in which the stress of her life makes her unable to sleep, which gives her anxiety and in turn makes her life less manageable and therefore more stressful. In being fired from Iris, at least there is the possibility of finding a job that is less dominated by male egos. Even though Iris acted as a secondary character and a second home in the novel, her firing makes space for the cycle to come to an end.
The third challenge is Casey’s love life. She chooses Oscar over Silas because she perceives Silas to be flighty and noncommittal, when it turns out it is Oscar who fulfills the patterns of men Casey is trying to consciously avoid. Ironically, Casey’s discovery of who Oscar truly is occurs right after she decides to stop seeing Silas. Casey gets to know Oscar more, including his ego, his jealousy, and his lack of respect for female writers.
Oscar’s need for constant attention is highlighted by his urgency in their relationship; he wants Casey to be with him all of the time whether or not she’s comfortable with taking such a huge step. When Oscar comes home from his work trip in a bad mood, he admits that he can get jealous when someone else gets attention. Oscar feigns humility at his book reading, showing Casey how quickly he can pander to an audience. She sees much of her father in Oscar: the bruised ego, the sense that success is not good enough, and the feeling of entitlement that the world owes them more.
Meanwhile, her attraction to Oscar is actually an attraction to his life with John and Jasper. Casey projects her own desires for her life onto the prospect of her life with Oscar because a life with Oscar means being a mother, something Casey wants. Casey doesn’t necessarily know at first how much she wants kids. When the gynecologist tells her she might have endometriosis, Casey must reckon with life ruling out options she may have never considered. Subconsciously, Casey is worried she can’t get pregnant—so worried that she doesn’t follow up with the gynecologist about the possibility of the endometriosis. Instead, she cherishes her time with John and Jasper, two little boys who need a mother. This is another subconscious projection on Casey’s behalf. John and Jasper know what it is to have lost their mother, and Casey can see her own pain in their behavior. If she can support them and if they can be a family together, then Casey can deal with anxieties and demons haunting her own family.
