Lily King's WRITERS and LOVERS - Is a Novel I Loved

"Writers & Lovers" aptly & cogently titled by award winning author Lily King (b Amer. 1963) is a crafty novel.  Basically her story is about a writer and her relationships with lovers & other writers.  Casey, short for Camilla, is a post graduate literary student, aspiring writer while working as a waitress who totters balancing her anxieties, her lovers and diminishing checking account.  There's little doubt this novel semi-biographical.  King denotes her travels and writer's worries.  Her previous novel "Euphoria" is representative of the life & travels of Margaret Mead.  "Euphoria" was listed a Nat'l Bk Critic's Circle Award Finalist.  "Writers & Lovers" is a delirious delight allowing us to venture into writers' narcissism & neuroses.  Casey's mundane quotidian activities traverse  waitressing in an upscale restaurant on Harvard's campus, writing for the 6th on her great Amer. novel and navigating 2 prospective lovers.  Casey's affections waffle between Oscar, an older, established writer and widow with 2 young sons and Silas, one of Oscar's writing students.  Casey's abode is the potting shed of her landlord.  Her astringent habitat is meant to funnel her writing habits & about all she can afford.  Her observations while waitressing are priceless.  She serves up an amusing assortment of characters; both guests & staff.  It's at the restaurant she meets Oscar under precocious circumstances.  She becomes sidetracked by her electric feelings for Silas, an erratic & charming suitor.  Casey is overwhelmed with mourning for her mother who died recently &  unexpectedly.  While Casey's life seems stagnant, there are subtle changes and an inner strength that keeps the reader glued to the page.  King shows off her bibliophile predilections for certain authors. Casey notes, "You get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you."  She also opines, "nearly every guy I've dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny...but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny."  King's majestic writing is magical.  It's hard to discern any machinations in her narrative.  You're taken along on a ride without realizing you've arrived.  WRITERS and LOVERS in addition to being about writing and its craft is also about love and its fathomless expanse of emotions.  "All that love.  All that love has to go somewhere."  Casey surfaces from a consortium of cynicism to a future with guarded optimism.  "For a moment, all my bees have turned to honey."   King's storytelling smatters with golden moments.