Book Review: Heart the Lover by Lily King.

I read Heart the Lover in big, thirsty gulps in three sittings, completely engrossed by King’s rendering of the complex ways in which life can interrupt and defer matters of the heart–and yet still give us bounty, beauty, purpose. Or if not any of those things, a marching plot that we must one way or another accept and make meaning of after the fact.

The love story between Yash and Jordan is the burning furnace of the book — at once epic and star-crossed as well as intimate and tender — and I found myself yearning to see it come to “HEA” fruition even as I understood that that ship had sailed, and that Jordan (Casey) was in a loving, stable, and giving relationship with a tender-hearted, “good guy” husband and two beautiful boys who needed her–and that she was perfectly fine. Fulfilled. Successful. Doing what she’d always dreamed of doing. (Many good things look nothing like we expect them to!) The novel brought to mind Celine Song’s gorgeously quiet movie, “Past Lives,” in which two would-be lovers contemplate what could have been and ultimately go their separate ways–a heartbreaking but also in some sense correct dissolution. Not all romances will succeed; in the real world, where there are meaty forces like where we live and what we do for a living (not to mention the nuances and flightinesses of the heart!), not all plots achieve their desired resolutions. Life is messy and full; first romances are not the only thing to spin us in our orbits. I have this vision of the novel’s characters hurling themselves against King’s plot: please let Yash come to me; please don’t let Yash die. And yet —

The book is all desires deferred, plot lines abandoned, narremes loosened from their brackets. Things that could almost be; things that should have been. Murky decisions born of complex loyalties. Names displaced, obscured, left ajar — we don’t even find the protagonist’s true name until the very last sentence of the book, after she has been dubbed Daisy, then Jordan, then (intimately) Hink. Meanwhile, Sam initially signs an apology letter directed to Jordan “Heart the Lover” — a moniker conceived of by Yash and later adopted by him, but ultimately pinned to Jordan’s husband, Silas, during a round of cards towards the end of the book. And even that phrase — the very title of the book — opens itself up to ambiguity. It could read like a command (as in “like the lover!”) or an epithet (“the lover is called heart”).

So what is King doing with all of these sliding doors, these slippages?

A lot, and deftly. The novel is a portrait of the power of early or first romances, the way they shape and define our desire and expectation but are more often than not not the single engine for our adult lives; it is also a treatise on the inexorability of time. The way days keep marching on, and we can carry heavy regret and bitterness if we are not careful–but that we can also find new loves and new lives if we stay open to the unfolding shape of the present. I loved the reveal of the protagonist’s name at the very end of the novel — she is in that moment finally plucked from her heart affair with Yash and planted firmly in the present, where she is needed by her son, who awaits brain surgery, and loved by her husband.

The conceit of the card game fascinated me, and felt like a handy metaphor for the novel’s operations and ethos. Here we have characters trying to “fill a family” by trading different cards featuring different roles between one another. There is a sensation of yearning, completion desire, the will to “fill a hand” with the correct assortment of people. And yet a lot of the game is, quite literally, out of their hands. A with life, no matter how much we strategize, we cannot fully account for the way other players will play their cards, and we never have the full picture on who holds what until the very end. We must simply play the best we can with our limited understanding of the state of things.

Heart the Lover Book Club Questions.

+What did you make of the protagonist’s naming and re-naming through the novel? She is Daisy, then Jordan, then finally Casey? What did these names mean to you? Why is her real name “revealed” at the end?

+What did you make of the initial “feint” romance between Jordan and Sam? How did their relationship shape or predict or otherwise interact with the one between Yash and Jordan? (Why was it in the novel?)

+Why did Yash not meet Jordan in NYC? What did this reveal about his character, and how did his decision shape the story?

+What did you make of Jordan’s husband, Silas? How did his character impact your reading of the relationship between Yash and Jordan?

+The final few chapters are intense, and tug us in different ways, towards different plots: Yash’s death on the one hand and Jordan’s son’s surgery on the other. Why is she being pulled between these two storylines and what did you make of their resolutions / irresolutions? Why are these stories “competing” against one another in the final chapters?

+What was the importance of the card game to the book?

Heart the Lover Moodboard.

Oh God you know I lived for the 80s-era college campus setting and aesthetic at the beginning — !

Heart the Lover Playlist.

Ballads about missed connections, the longing and hungry heart, regret — !

Find it on Spotify HERE AND Apple HERE.

Heart the Lover Card Game.

Did you see that Lily has instructions for the Heart the Lover card game on her website, and includes illustrations for the cards from artist Sarah Steedman?! SO charming. This would be a fun book club activity if you choose this book!

As an aside, a fun hostess gift idea: a gorgeous set of playing cards. A few beautiful sets I came across:

LIBERTY LONDON

RILEY SHEEHEY

RIFLE PAPER

CASPARI

PAPIER

DEAR ANNABELLE

L’OBJET

Heart the Lover Inspired.

I absolutely loved the aesthetic and texture of this book. A few “inspired-by” finds:

THESE ARE THE GOOL OLD DAYS PENNANT // THE BOOK // FRANK AND EILEEN SHIRLEY BUTTON-DOWN // AYR LEGEND JEANS (TTS, MORE WASHES HERE) // GREEN HAT // BIC CRYSTALS // AYR RUGBY (LOOK FOR LESS HERE) // MY TORTOISESHELL GLASSES // PLAYING CARDS // LEATHER DUFFEL // JAMIE HALLER BOAT SHOES (LOOK FOR LESS HERE; ALSO LOVE THESE) // GREAT GATSBY

Next Month’s Book Club Pick!

Our January book club pick is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans! I know many Magpies have just read this / are in the midst of reading it — I love the backstory and am enjoying its wild allusiveness and metafictionality.

If you’re looking for something quieting during this busy time, I shared my favorite books to calm the nervous system here.

Post-Scripts.

+My book, Small Wonders, is now available for pre-order! This is a collection of essays, musings, and list poetry on the art of paying attention, noticing love in its smallest denominations, and finding the miraculous in the mundane.  It is an extension of the writing here on the blog, and is organized around the themes we often discuss here: the dance of motherhood, inheritances and intimacies, the natural world, and the wide world of language. I am so proud of it and hope you will find it a worthy companion for your legato-style mornings.

+If you’re a fan of Lily King (I’m a new one) — what else should I read from her back list?! Any recommendations?

+How do you get over a book hangover?

+Books that changed my life.

+A book I DNF. (And it’s OK!)

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