When I’m in bookshops in Manhattan, I’m always surprised at how foreign they feel. There will be shelves and shelves of authors I have never heard of and I realise it is only the classics and the seriously top bestsellers that make it backwards and forwards over the Atlantic. Then, just occasionally I find an American writer, usually east coast based, who is lauded and praised there and whose writing I come to enjoy. Such is the case with Lily King.
She is unusual though as she has quite recently ‘made it’ on this side of the ocean and last week appeared in the Sunday Times bestsellers lists. These books are, how shall I describe them, maybe ‘upmarket romantic dramas’ paints the right picture. They are quite campus based and studenty. My years as a student we’re definitely not the happiest time of my life but, perversely, I am very glad I went through them and had that experience and, I certainly enjoy reading books with that setting.
The first story by Lily King that I read was ‘Writers and Lovers.’ I loved the story but I just had to try hard to cope with the horribly lurid artwork on the cover. I turned it face down on my bedside table! Why this style and fluorescent colour was deemed appropriate for what they are selling as literary fiction I really don’t know. To me the cover belonged on a beach, rather dog eared and sticky with a dribble of orange aperol spritzand of course gritty with sand. Anyway, I need to get a grip, there are worse problems.
The American blurb says that these are books for English majors. Yes I understand that and I have to admit I find it rather fun. The literary allusions come thick and fast. The narrative moves forward very confidently and clearly even if you don’t know some of the quotes and allusions but it does provide another level of interest.
We are in Boston and our main character Casey is studying and also trying to become a writer and rather inevitably has to wait tables to cover her living costs. She becomes part of a triangle of 3 rather nerdy students and the reader is not quite sure which of the two men she will end up with and indeed which one you would choose for her. Lives are complicated as they always are at a student age, so many possibilities, so many decisions, so many essays, so many parties.
In ‘Heart the Lover’ which is the book enjoying its time as a bestseller at the moment, Lily King has, rather unusually, written both a prequel and a sequel to ‘Writers and Lovers,’ part 1 and part 2. There has been a gentle fashion over the last few years for prequels, what happened earlier in the story. I’m thinking recently of Joanne Harris producing Vianne, telling what went on before the story of Chocolat begins.
The latter part of ‘Heart the Lover’ was a very satisfying read, showing how the lives of Casey and those who had been important to her in the uni days still affected and truly overshadowed her life several decades later. Do we cast off our student days and leave them behind or do they make us who we are?
Maybe dip into an author with whom you are unfamiliar?