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.