“I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a woman 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.”
Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, Casey is devastated. She’s 31, broke, riddled with anxiety and trying to finish writing a book she started 6 years ago. This is in fact a coming of age story except our protagonist is 31 and has had a long wild youth immersed in creative pursuits and spontaneous love affairs that leave her mostly broken. She’s now at the cusp of selling her novel and finds herself in the middle of a love triangle trying to decide between her love interests.
I think as more people read this book, the reviews are going to be a mixed bag. I really wanted to love this one, I chose it as my Book of the Month pick and even the title called to me. I think the author is good at slice of life novels but a lot of this book still completely underwhelmed me. I never connected with Casey, I didn’t like or dislike her but I found some of her decision making process to be extremely lacking. Some of the decisions she made that got her to the point of being a 31 year old server riddled in debt was atrocious to say the least. The way she let emotions and men drive so much of her life was quite appalling.
“I can tell he lost someone close somehow. You can feel that in people, an openness, or maybe it’s an opening that you’re talking into. With other people, people who haven’t been through something like that, you feel the solid wall. Your words go scattershot off of it.”
There was so much about her family that could have been explored that King just flies pass through. Her father was a pervert who lost his job for spying on young girls in their locker rooms and that was never deeply explored. Her mother left her father for a younger dying man and that also just didn’t get as much light in the story.
I would have preferred a slightly different book as Casey’s current life really didn’t have that much of an appeal to me and her love interests were a bit lack luster for that to really draw me into the story. This book is completely internal and largely takes place in Casey’s head, we see everything through her eyes, it’s really hard to write a compelling and readable story that has this format. This is a character driven book so if you need a strong plot to enjoy a book, this will not be the one for you.
“It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”
That being said, I enjoyed King’s writing style. She has a lot of great lines about being a woman and struggling with achieving within the creative space. I think she succinctly captures that stage in our lives where we’re feeling unmoored with deep anxiety about getting our lives together, torn between achieving stability especially financially and pursuing our passion.
A lot of Casey’s friends gave up pursuit of the literary life and just went to grad school or law school to be able to make an actual living. This book picked up half way and ended on a happy note which made me happy and excited for Casey. I really enjoyed a lot of the witty conversations between the characters especially with one of her love interests’ children. King gives us a glimpse of the end of a long youth and I left the book feeling satisfied with the state of the characters’ lives when the book ends.
If you enjoy character driven books, you should definitely pick this one up. I’m also going to pick up her previous novel, Euphoria because I’ve heard a lot of good things about that one as well. Have you read this one? Are you going to? I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads.
Leggy
TwoNightStands 