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cameliarose's review against another edition
3.0
31 years old Casey is an aspiring writer. She lives in a tiny, moldy garage room in Boston city and waits tables at a restaurant, heavily in debt but still writing. Her mother just died and her father is a total jerk.
Writers & Lovers reads like a prolonged scene from a young woman's life. I don't know what to make of it. The writing is lively and charming, but the story doesn't immerse me. I find it hard to get under the character's skin, harder to care about her relationships with men. There is just a little too much pathos to my liking. I love the author's Euphoria a lot more.
The story is set in 1997, one year before Google and ten years before iPhone. It gives me nostalgia.
Quotes:
"My father wanted to give me what he didn't get. Then he wanted me to get what he couldn't reach."
"I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a women 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. "
"You don't always want what you need.
Writers & Lovers reads like a prolonged scene from a young woman's life. I don't know what to make of it. The writing is lively and charming, but the story doesn't immerse me. I find it hard to get under the character's skin, harder to care about her relationships with men. There is just a little too much pathos to my liking. I love the author's Euphoria a lot more.
The story is set in 1997, one year before Google and ten years before iPhone. It gives me nostalgia.
Quotes:
"My father wanted to give me what he didn't get. Then he wanted me to get what he couldn't reach."
"I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a women 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. "
"You don't always want what you need.
jnbell2012's review against another edition
5.0
Everything I didn't know I needed today!
I fell in love with Casey and the whirlwind of a life that she was experiencing. The character development in this was brilliant. I loved the story and the ending.
I fell in love with Casey and the whirlwind of a life that she was experiencing. The character development in this was brilliant. I loved the story and the ending.
amber_03's review against another edition
4.0
How to rate this book even. It makes you feel a range of different emotions. I'm not a fan of super happy endings in literary fictions, so the ending wasn't appealing to me. I understand why it will be perfect for a lot of readers, but for me, I felt like the main protagonist wasn't opened completely. Yes, we do see her struggles, and her feelings of being lost, disoriented and miserable, but I was hoping for a glance into her happinnes moments more - I think this would have justified the happy ending for me. Because it felt like a lot of black paint until the last 5% of the book.
s_yodes's review against another edition
5.0
I have a stupid number of books, but it’s because of so many times I’ve gotten a book from the library and not been able to underline and bend corners in enthusiastic discovery. Then I end up buying the book anyway, but that first reading is lost. Alas! I’ll return this library book, wait for my copy to arrive and hope all future readings will be like a palimpsest, so I can recapture this feeling.
bethweisberger's review against another edition
4.0
Loved the second half!
“What if this is all the life I get?”
“What if this is all the life I get?”
curlyhairbibliophile's review against another edition
4.0
I ended up really loving Writers & Lovers! I struggled to get into the book for the first 50-100 pages, but after that I FLEW through it.
harrisbuellersdayoff's review against another edition
5.0
Beautiful, this book is a portrait of what it means to be a writer and to be human.
janine1122's review against another edition
4.0
Writers and Lovers is my favorite kind of literary fiction. It's (for lack of a better term) highbrow enough to fall into that "literary" category, while not being so highbrow that it's unrelatable, or so out there that it feels unattainable.
Casey, the protagonist of the story, is not all that likable, but she is interesting enough. She's 31, a struggling writer, making a living as a waitress, living in a rented garage, and mourning the recent and unexpected death of her mother. She's very clearly at a loose ends, and becomes more so as the book wears on.
Honestly, that loose ends feeling? Highly relatable right now. I feel you, Casey, I do.
But I digress. Casey is kind of muddling her way through life, trying to finish her novel, barely making ends meet, making bad relationship choices. She's kind of self-centered and likes to throw a pity party - which is honestly sometimes earned and sometimes not. And honestly, who of us hasn't been there at some point in our lives? I know I have...so I forgave her for those transgressions.
It's kind of hard to write a review for this book. Not because I'm afraid of spoiling anything necessary, but because the enjoyment of this book is in sharing in Casey's journey. It's in seeing her fall apart and try to put herself back together. And that's a hard thing to describe. Does anything particularly exciting happen in this book? No. But turns out, I'm a sucker for a good character-driven story, and this is certainly one of those.
Definitely worth the read.
Casey, the protagonist of the story, is not all that likable, but she is interesting enough. She's 31, a struggling writer, making a living as a waitress, living in a rented garage, and mourning the recent and unexpected death of her mother. She's very clearly at a loose ends, and becomes more so as the book wears on.
Honestly, that loose ends feeling? Highly relatable right now. I feel you, Casey, I do.
But I digress. Casey is kind of muddling her way through life, trying to finish her novel, barely making ends meet, making bad relationship choices. She's kind of self-centered and likes to throw a pity party - which is honestly sometimes earned and sometimes not. And honestly, who of us hasn't been there at some point in our lives? I know I have...so I forgave her for those transgressions.
It's kind of hard to write a review for this book. Not because I'm afraid of spoiling anything necessary, but because the enjoyment of this book is in sharing in Casey's journey. It's in seeing her fall apart and try to put herself back together. And that's a hard thing to describe. Does anything particularly exciting happen in this book? No. But turns out, I'm a sucker for a good character-driven story, and this is certainly one of those.
Definitely worth the read.