Heart the Lover by Lily King

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Has anyone read this? I read it in two days and finished it in tears. I haven’t cried while reading since Crawdads. I found it very powerful. Really brought back the student days and the intensity of those relationships and then the shift to middle-age and how seeing those people again transplants you right back to who you once were. Very, very moving and literary. I had never heard of Lily King until I read a review for this book. I’m going to read Writers and Lovers next.

I also inhaled this and was a sobbing mess at the end. So, so good. Both the youthful and the middle aged voice of the protagonist are spot on. Possibly my book of the year!

I'm reading it now, it's due back to the library soon with 10 reservations on it. I've read Euphoria, Writers and Lovers and her short story collection, Five Tuesdays in Winter, and have realised that I have 3 of her novels still to read. I have two of them on Kindle and have tracked down my paperback copy of the first one today - luckily I had some idea where it was (I ran out of shelf space ages ago, so most of the fiction that is shelved in any order is books I've owned for about 25 years (and even then it's not necessarily there, books by authors from Mc to T are often particularly hard to find.

I have bought this, but not yet read it — Writers and Lovers is brilliant, as is Euphoria.