WRITERS & LOVERS: A Novel

The award-winning US novelist follows Casey in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with her trademark humour, heart and intelligence, the novel explores the artistic passion, ambition and the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. Blindsided by her mother's sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, mouldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she has been writing for six years. At the age of 31, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of - the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Her fight to fulfil her ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink. It is a moving story of grief and recovery, funny and immensely clever, emotionally rare and strong. 324pp.