Writers & Lovers

King’s, elegant, droll follow-up to Euphoria traces an aspiring novelist’s effort to find herself after turning 30 and losing her mother. After a series of lovers and moves, Casey Peabody ends up alone in Boston, Mass., with nothing to hold onto. Her commitment to writing each morning keeps her at a dead-end waitressing job that barely covers her grungy rented room and the minimum payments for the massive debt she incurred for her undergraduate and graduate degrees. Her devastating grief for her mother, whose unexplained death occurred while vacationing abroad, can only be assuaged, she feels, by finishing the novel she’s been working on for six years (“I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse”). She begins dating the successful writer Oscar Kolton, as well as one of his students, and finds new inspiration in the romances (“Usually a man in my life slows my work down, but it turns out two men give me fresh energy”). Facing the impending loss of her apartment, she fears that living with one of her lovers would expose her “blighted” dysfunction. While King’s resolutions of Casey’s financial, emotional, and creative challenges don’t feel uniformly convincing, the nimble, astute narration appeals. This meditation on the passing of youth is touching and ruefully funny. Agent: Julie Barer, the Book Group. (Mar.)