Writers and Lovers

“Conversations in foreign languages don’t linger in my head like they do in English. They don’t last. They remind me of the invisible-ink pen my mother sent me for Christmas when I was fifteen and she had gone, an irony that escaped her but not me.” 

This quote emphasizes several layered elements about Casey’s characterization. The first is how smart she is; she knows several languages and is sharply interested and knowledgeable about the world. Secondly, this intelligence is sharply juxtaposed by her lifestyle of waitressing and living in a potting shed, inviting the reader to ask how a creative and smart person like Casey could live in such financial turmoil. Third, this quote highlights Casey’s memory, and as this is a book about a woman trying to flee the memories of her past for a more positive future, it’s important to note how easily triggered her consciousness is to thoughts of her past life and her mother. 

“I look into my eyes, but they aren’t really mine, not the eyes I used to have. They’re the eyes of someone very tired and very sad, and once I see them I feel even sadder and then I see that sadness, that compassion, for the sadness in my eyes…I’m both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person.” 

This quote demonstrates the brutal loneliness of Casey’s adulthood. She is not so young anymore, but neither is she old. When Casey sees herself in the mirror, she is sad that she can’t see the woman she used to see: a poor writer still, but one with friends, lovers, and a mother. This missing of her former self sends Casey into a spiral in which she realizes that she is wholly on her own, and the reality of her aloneness makes her cycle of sadness start all over again.

“I told him the things that were coming back to me about my mother when I was little: her lemon smell and her gardening gloves with the rubber bumps and her small square toes that cracked when she walked barefoot. Her tortoiseshell headbands that were salty at the tips if you sucked on them.” 

This quote captures King’s attention to detail. The imagery she summons through her narrator is important because it reminds the reader of Casey’s primary identity: She is a writer. Casey’s precise recollection of her world is indicative of King’s observations about her own world, thereby drawing an autobiographical connection between King and Casey.

“We talk about a book called Troubles that I read and passed along to her. She loved it as much as I did, and we go through the scenes we liked best. It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.” 

This quote highlights Casey’s love language: literature. She is in a deeply lonely period of her life, but connecting over literature is the way she can be a part of a deep moment with another person. This highlights Casey’s identity as a reader whose entire life is wound up in words and literature. This is also one of the first times Lily King shows Casey in a genuine moment of kindred friendship that isn’t sad or sexualized.

“It still burns a bit, coming out. He listens. He breathes into the phone. I can tell he lost someone close somehow. You can feel that in people, an openness, or maybe it’s an opening that you’re walking into. With other people, people who haven’t been through something like that, you feel the solid wall. Your words go scattershot off of it.” 

This quote articulates Casey’s new identity in her grief. Silas is the second man King introduces who connects with Casey through shared grief. Here, King suggests that Casey’s acute ability to notice the feeling of loss in another person, and her belief that she won’t be able to connect with someone who hasn’t been through such a loss, means that Casey might continuously be in a cycle of finding her own grief in others. In Luke’s case, this was destructive. King invites the reader to ask if Silas will be the same, or if their connection will help one another.

“I hadn’t had that fear again, and I don’t think I’ve ever exhibited any signs of that illness, but I did start writing fiction the year my mother was gone and maybe that’s where I channeled my schizophrenic potential.” 

Casey compares her commitment to writing fiction as the place where she channels her “schizophrenic potential” in order to emphasize how indivisible her writing self is from her identity. Without comparing writing to a mental illness, King highlights how natural and unstoppable Casey’s writing is. The reader is invited to wonder if Casey can become more productive in her writing now that her mother is permanently gone by replicating her adolescent creative process, in which writing was her primary source for processing the loss of her mother.

“My voice is nothing special, but when your mother tells you something about yourself, even if you’ve coaxed it out of her, it’s hard not to always believe it…I don’t know if she is outside of me or inside of me, but she is here. I feel her love for me. I feel my love reach her. A brief, easy exchange.” 

In this quote, King reveals the heart of Casey’s pain. Losing her mother means losing an unconditional love that kept Casey rooted, confident, and loved. Without her mother, King suggests, there may be no one left who can love Casey as much and as easily.

“They watch my hands in silence. Even in the chaos and clatter of brunch, I’m aware of the empty chair, the hole where a mother should be.” 

This quote is a sentimental observation of Casey’s connection with Oscar’s children when she first meets them. As though Jasper and John found Casey because of some subliminal lost-mother complex, Casey is drawn to the boys and their concern for their father. The intimacy of watching her hands, as they wonder about their mother or miss a woman’s hands in the house, is more poignant than most of the descriptions King uses to describe the connection between Casey and Oscar. This quote foreshadows the implication that Casey’s interest in Oscar stems more from subconsciously wishing to fill that hole—for the kids and for herself.

“Oscar is studying me. He’s making decisions already. I can feel this. Between our call and today he talked himself out of me, and now he is coming back around. 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.” 

This quote highlights Casey’s typical relationships with men. As evidenced by her summer fling with Luke, Casey tends to follow the man’s lead in sex and emotional expression, to the detriment of focusing on her own feelings about the relationship. As she senses Oscar’s observations of her, it implies an awareness of being seen that is not self-conscious; instead, it belies Casey’s understanding of herself in relation to men. It should be noted that Casey does not narrate her awareness of Silas observing her.

“Even if she eviscerates it. It’s movement.”

This quote emphasizes how important it is for Casey’s life to develop out of the stagnation that informs the first 20 or so chapters of the novel. Casey is willing to deal with hard criticism and rejection of her work, as long as she actually has her work completed. Casey’s need for a community of readers and writers is also emphasized here, demonstrating that as independent as she is, Casey can’t do everything on her own.

“Our dates are not self-conscious like that. We don’t acknowledge that they’re happening or say what they mean. It all feels a bit haphazard and weightless, and to call attention to this might let out too much of the air.” 

This description of her third date with Silas shows how vivid Casey’s time is with Silas. Casey lives for the moment, and with Silas she gets to experience energies and vibes instead of worrying about next steps or even what the next conversation will be. Their time together is easy but electric.

“Usually a man in my life slows my work down, but it turns out two men give me fresh energy for the revision. The emotions get heightened. I give the reader more pleasure.” 

By chapter 27, Casey is in a new, exciting shift in her life. Her writing is productive, and her social life is exciting. Rather than feeling lonely and uninspired, Casey is invigorated by the two interesting new men in her life. Casey’s personal life informs her writing life and vice versa. This quote is important because it highlights how much Casey needs and benefits from positive socializing, instead of always being on her own. A writer’s life is solitary, but Casey still needs the passions that come with human contact, especially contact with two different but engaging men.

“Nearly every guy I’ve dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule. […] I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it’s how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I’ve met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.” 

Casey’s observation about men is crucial to her understanding how and why she chooses her lovers. If men have learned a complex about being famous that women haven’t, then the implication is that Casey has been sacrificing her own ambitions for the men she’s dated, a cycle that she is now repeating again with Oscar.

“My father had this kind of drama in him, sudden surges of despair about his life and wasted chances and breaks he never got. It took me a while to understand that my wins on the golf course, no matter how hard he strived for them, only made him feel worse. I figured that an actually successful man like Oscar would have outgrown all that crap.” 

This quote emphasizes Casey’s new understanding of Oscar. Instead of being a new type of man that Casey could date healthily, Oscar turns out to be the same as all the other men in her life, including her father. Casey sees that her father and Oscar have the same “kind of drama,” demonstrating that in dating Oscar Casey may be repeating her childhood of jumping through hoops for her father’s ego. This foreshadows the certain demise of their relationship. 

“I don’t want to be infertile. I also don’t want to be pregnant. Fitzgerald said that the sign of genius is being able to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. But what if you hold two contradictory fears? Are you still some kind of genius?”

Casey is struggling to understand what she wants. Even though so many of her peers have a clear vision about what they want from their adulthood, Casey feels lost. But there’s a reason that Casey is such an engaging narrator: She is relatable to the reader, so it’s Casey’s indecision and uncertainty that is more normal than the clarity she sees in her former friends. Casey’s desire for children is poignant, given her affection for Oscar’s children and her own absence of a family unit.

“I’m scared of men at this time of night when I’m on foot, not on my bike. I’m scared of men in cars and men in doorways, men in groups and men alone. They are menacing. Men-acing. Men-dacious. Men-tal. I’m outside now. I’m circling the big tree. You hate men, Paco said once. Do I? I don’t like working for them.” 

Casey’s reflection on her anger towards men comes almost as a relief to the reader. For the entire novel, King has been implying that Casey’s relationships with men have always been complicated, leaving her lonely, sad, and unmotivated about her own life. Finally, the reader sees Casey confront her frustration over how men have controlled her life. The distinction between hating men, as Paco suggested, and hating working for them, as Casey acknowledges, is also crucial. Casey is empathetic, hardworking, creative, and interested in other people. She doesn’t get the same respect from men in the creative field of writing or in her professional life.

“I think the enthusiasm came when I started writing. Then I understood how hard it is to re-create in words what you see and feel in your head. That’s what I love about Bernhard in the book. He manages to simulate consciousness, and it’s contagious because while you’re reading it rubs off on you and your mind starts working like that for a while. I love that. That reverberation for me is what is most important about literature.” 

In this moment of Casey’s interview with Aisha Jain, King reveals a core foundational concept of her novel. Writers & Lovers is a story about a writer experiencing her world at its most severe, who lives and breathes for her work. This quote captures the essence of King’s message about the art of writing a novel. For Casey, as it is for King, reading and writing is such an immersive experience that she cannot escape from it. This highlights that Casey isn’t a writer because she chooses to be; rather, creativity is a necessity for her.

“I didn’t know you could blow an interview by feeling too at ease. I didn’t know that was a danger. I didn’t talk about any of the things Muriel coached me on, the curriculum I developed in Spain and the undergrad classes I taught at grad school and then in Albuquerque. Instead I went off on that riff about Bernhard, and I remember as I get on the highway that it’s not ‘in my wing chair’ but ‘in the wing chair.’ ‘As I sit in the wing chair’ is the refrain in Woodcutters, and I am awash in shame for having gotten it wrong. Plus she only hires happy people, so cross me off that list.” 

This quote demonstrates the enormous stress that Casey places on herself. She believes without much concrete evidence that she has ruined the interview, then berates herself for mixing up the central quote of her conversation with Aisha, even though there’s little realistic chance that Aisha would ever know. The way Casey is so hard on herself emphasizes how alone she is in the world without her mother. Since her mother’s death, Casey has no one to hear her anxieties and soothe them, and no one to build her up when she needs support. This helps portray the self-fulfilling cycle of self-doubt that continues to suffocate Casey’s ability to make better decisions for herself. Lastly, though she never wanted to be a high school teacher, she discovers through this moment of shame how badly she wanted the job. This is important because it is the first moment in which Casey is faced with the opportunity to do something that she genuinely likes to do, rather than what she has to do.

“We stop at the clam shack and eat at the window near the picnic tables that overlook the harbor where I sat with my mother the day she came back from Arizona and tried to explain, again, her year and a half of absence. I just nodded. I wish I had been awful to her that day. I wish I’d thrown my food and screamed vile things at her. I wish she’d dug all my feelings out of me. Maybe I’d be better at saying them now.”

Casey’s acknowledgement of the emotional wreckage of her mother’s first abandonment is a crucial moment of character development. It is the first time in the novel when Casey admits to herself that she’s not good at communicating her needs and feelings, which means that she attracts and develops relationships with men who cannot emotionally fulfill her. Casey needs help, love, and understanding but she doesn’t know how to ask for it. She traces her current problems as a 31-year-old with the origin of her emotional issues in high school, highlighting for herself how much she needs to let go of the past and change her approach in order not to repeat her cycles of loneliness and despair. 

“My light is still on and my thumb is still inside the book, but I fell asleep. I fell asleep. I don’t even care that I’ve been woken up, because I fell asleep like I used to, for years and years, my thumb in a book.” 

This quote captures the structural moment in the novel when Casey’s luck starts to change. Her inability to sleep was like a plague for much of the novel, deteriorating her physical and mental health. Once Casey begins to get her mental and physical health under control, truly great things happen to her. This quote is also important because it foreshadows Casey’s relationship with Silas. It is Silas’s story that helps Casey escape the cacophony of her stress, an important symbol that demonstrates the depths of her connection to him.

“Of all his strange responses, this is the one that helps me the most. This is not nothing.” 

This quote captures the simplistic reality of Casey’s complex problems. What she truly needed all along was an objective voice to assure her that her stresses are valid, that her grief is valuable, and that her life is worth having anxiety over. Casey no longer has her mother to do this for her, and in finally seeking therapy she is able to find that validating but objective voice. In hearing her problems echoed by another, Casey can finally tackle them head-on and move forward.

“At the end of each day that week I remember my own novel but with more curiosity and less panic. I wonder if Jennifer is reading it. I decide not to worry about not hearing from her until next month.” 

This quote is important in emphasizing Casey’s character development in two ways. The first is that Casey is finally not obsessing over the novel she’s worked on for years. It is the first time that she can appreciate her work from afar instead of agonizing over it. This shift in the relationship with her own novel is important in allowing her to dive into her new teaching job, which King implies is also what helps Casey avoid thinking too much about her novel. With the new teaching job, Casey now has a productive distraction that is creatively and intellectually stimulating, giving her more clarity on her life in general and her novel in particular. Secondly, the last sentence begins with “I decide.” Casey has been out of control of her emotions and her life for the majority of the novel, and here she finally asserts some proactive self-control. She discovers that sometimes her anxiety and worries are a decision, not a given.

“What I have had for the past six years, what has been constant and steady in my life is the novel I’ve been writing. This has been my home, the place I could always retreat to. The place I could sometimes even feel powerful, I tell them. The place where I am most myself.”

This vulnerable examination of Casey’s relationship to her novel is an important conclusion statement about the writer’s life. Casey can’t not write, but it’s more than a creative impulse or a career goal. Here, King reveals that the novel is also the most important companion Casey has, and one she can rely on the most. No matter what happens in Casey’s life, she always had her novel to dive into. This helps the reader understand Casey’s psychological relationship to writing. Publishing the novel does two things for Casey: First, it releases her from this steady companion, thereby allowing her to explore the world and her mind in other ways. Secondly, publication of the place that is her home and her source of empowerment means that Casey is seen, heard, and appreciated for the most personal and important part of herself.