Coming of Age, Whether She’s Ready or Not

GROUP TEXT In Lily King’s new novel, a young woman searches for meaning. Welcome to Group Text, a monthly column about novels, memoirs and story collections that make you want to talk, ask questions and linger for a while in another world. For many book groups, it’s hard enough to figure out when to meet, whose turn it is to host and whether or not to add or subtract members. Group Text addresses the main event: what to read, with a focus on propulsive, thought-provoking, discussion-worthy books.

This month’s pick is WRITERS & LOVERS (Grove, 324 pp. , $27), by Lily King — a story of loss, love and growing up after a decade of adulthood. What it’s about Casey Peabody is a 31-year-old former golf prodigy turned waiter and writer. She is lonely, broke, directionless, grieving, possibly unwell and extremely funny, even when she doesn’t mean to be.

“Writers & Lovers” follows her hardscrabble quest for solvency and passion. Why I picked it I saw a bubble of hope in the wreck of Casey’s life that made me want to find out how she turns it all into something that floats. Also, I love books about wait staff. And writers.

Casey Peabody is mourning her mother’s death when we first join her on a bike ride from her garage bedroom to the restaurant where she works. The sudden loss is far enough in the past that Casey feels she should be functioning normally, but recent enough that she doesn’t know how to bring it up in casual conversation. (She tells herself, “He has called to ask you out on a date. Do not mention a dead mother.

”) The freshness of missing her mother is as baffling as it is heartbreaking: “When I was visiting her a few years ago she hugged me and said, ‘Tomorrow after you leave I will stand here at this window and remember that yesterday you were right here with me. ’ And now she’s dead and I have that feeling all the time, no matter where I stand. ” If you’ve ever missed someone, I challenge you not to dog-ear this page. But Casey keeps pedaling, even if she’s not entirely sure where she’s going.

We learn that, six weeks after her mother’s death, she went to an artists’ residency in Rhode Island. But instead of working on her novel as planned, Casey spent half her time gallivanting with a sweet-talking poet and the other half steeped in memories of her mother: her lemon smell, her small square toes, “her tortoiseshell headbands that were salty at the tips if you sucked on them. ” When she isn’t writing or dreading writing, Casey works at Iris, a Cambridge watering hole staffed by oddball personalities you’ll recognize if you’ve ever rolled cutlery and memorized a list of “specials” that are actually leftovers. This is where Casey meets Oscar Kolton — novelist, widower and father, in that order.