I confess I’ve always been a little dismissive of people who rave about a novel or short story because it’s set in a place or time they recognize, with landmarks they can identify and relate to. But I also admit that part of what drew me to Lily King’s new book, WRITERS & LOVERS, was her portrayal of Boston and Cambridge in the late 1990s, a few years before I moved to the city. It was fun to read the story and recognize establishments that have since closed their doors, as well as places (like the Charles River and its ubiquitous geese) that continue to define the landscape of the city where I live.

Of course, not all of King’s readers live in Boston, and certainly the specificity of setting is not the only (or even the primary) reason to read WRITERS & LOVERS. But her attention to detail in matters of setting is indicative of the care with which she treats the book as a whole --- everything from the anxiety of seeing a doctor for an ailment that could be serious to the drudgery/whirlwind of working as a server at a restaurant catering to entitled patrons.

"WRITERS & LOVERS is full of moments of keen observation, of wry remarks about the challenges of writing and the awkwardness of early love."

Casey Peabody, King’s protagonist, is a pretty good waitress: sensitive to her customers’ needs, and able to juggle a thousand tasks while also fending off the gross advances of the chef in the kitchen. But waitressing is not going to cut it forever. Even though Casey lives in an extraordinarily modest apartment --- actually more of a shack/garage --- and pretty much never buys her own food, her crippling credit card and student loan debt are rapidly catching up with her, and her modest income as a server is not going to keep her ahead of the collections agencies much longer.

Meanwhile, Casey gets little sleep because she’s up early in the morning, hammering away at the novel that has defined the last six years of her life. This project, as she realizes late in WRITERS & LOVERS, has been the one constant in her life, even as she suffered the loss of two major romantic relationships and the sudden, inexplicable death of her mother.

Casey is devoted to finishing her novel, but her life (as King’s title suggests) is also complicated by two competing suitors. One is Oscar, a widower with two young sons and an award-winning novelist 15 years her senior, who seems genuinely smitten by Casey. The other is Silas, an earnest but possibly unreliable fellow writer, who actually sits in on Oscar’s Wednesday night writing seminars.

Casey’s reluctance of committing to one or the other of these very different men is mirrored by her crippling fear of coming to the end of her novel and figuring out what she can do next. Now that she’s in her early 30s, her fellow creative writing majors are all jumping ship: getting their real estate license or marrying well. Casey knows she wants to continue pursuing a creative life, but at what point does she acknowledge that she might not be cut out for it?

WRITERS & LOVERS is full of moments of keen observation, of wry remarks about the challenges of writing and the awkwardness of early love. It’s also, at times, remarkably funny, filled with subtle and sometimes surprising one-liners that balance out what could have been a fairly bleak plot and instead sets the stage for something resembling a happy ending. This is the kind of novel that will be adored not only by Bostonians or “creative types”; it offers insights and reassurances for anyone who has found themselves on the cusp of impending change, terrified of how a new beginning might also portend the loss of an old and beloved self.