Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Lily, welcome to Waterstones.
Thank you, Will. I'm happy to be here.
Chapter 2: What inspired Lily King to write 'Heart of the Lover'?
I am so delighted to have a chance to talk to you about this book finally because I was due to talk to you over a year ago and I was so excited about it and then unfortunately your trip was cancelled and I've been holding on to that feeling of wanting to talk to you about this book.
We've just been celebrating Fiction Book of the Month, so a whole new host of readers have enjoyed Heart of the Lover.
and I wondered where to start and I thought I would ask you about not so much where you started because I know that you knew where the book was going to finish and you started writing the beginning and it took you far longer to get to the end than you thought it would and I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about why that was.
I had this idea that most of the book would be what is now the third part. That's what I was interested in. That's where I thought the meat of the novel would be. And that I would go back to the beginning just for maybe 15, 20 pages and just kind of fill in, you know, so we have a sense of where these people have been and why they are where they are and all of the weird emotions.
But, of course, those very complicated motions took a lot more than 20 pages to write. And so, also, I think what happened to me is that the book sort of started to slow down. We were in the classroom, that first scene. And then, and she gets asked out on that date. And then he brings her back to his house.
And the minute we go through that door, like for me as a writer in the first draft, everything just slowed right down and I did not expect that. But suddenly I was describing, you know, what was on the side table as they walked in to the entryway and the whole layout. I don't do like layouts of houses. So it just, it was a surprise to me. And so then I really kind of settled in with that.
And when I first write a book, I don't actually think I'm actually writing a book. I just think I'm playing around. So I wasn't thinking about any of it. It was just all sort of impulse and what I felt like doing. And I was avoiding writing another novel.
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Chapter 3: How did Lily King develop her characters and their relationships?
And so I just kind of was playing around. And then it just dragged on for over 100 pages. I mean, not dragged, because I was having a great time. Because I didn't really want to get to the...
the you know kind of um heavier middle-aged stuff yeah yeah it was fun to be in the youth fun is exactly the right word and i think because i've heard you talking about how you see relationships and how you talk about love and you've spoken about how for you there are sort of three parts to it there is an intellectual stimulation and a physical stimulation that often comes first
and that the emotional attachment comes later. And I felt whilst reading the book that that's exactly what the reader is going through, because they get the physical attraction that's clear from the beginning, the intellectual kind of banter that's going on between these three characters, and the emotional stuff comes a little bit later. And I think that's why it has that lovely payoff.
But I can see why you were having so much fun writing the college stuff, because emotions are high.
EMILY FORTUNA- Emotions are high. And there's tension, and there's complication. And I was really interested in just those feelings of your first big love, you know, when you're completely defenseless and vulnerable and you have no idea that anything could ever go wrong. And I just, I needed to lay that all out and it took some time.
There are, whilst we're talking about that sort of useful thing, what I loved was that when I talk about sort of emotions being high, there are sort of moments of, for example, that physical desire that you can feel for somebody. There's a moment where she talks about barely being able to get her clothes off before sort of having an orgasm, frankly, with somebody.
And then another moment where a note is received which has something very mean in it and having to burn that note. These are the kinds of actions of... of youth. But I wondered whether that was true, whether that is just a youthful thing. Do those things persist or is there something about that sort of time of life where things are pitched that little bit higher?
It's all so new. It was all so new before with her. She'd never felt that feeling. I mean, what she has with Sam is entirely different than what she has with Yash. And Sam is her first really
like physical um attraction and sexual attraction like all the pieces aren't there with him but that piece is there and so and and of course his religion and his kind of ambivalence about what they're doing kind of you know makes it all more exciting for both of them
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Chapter 4: What themes of love are explored in 'Heart of the Lover'?
How would I ever have said that in a million years? You have to have made that up. And so you just don't know. And having kids, another thing is that you have these incredible memories of movies. And you want to show them to your children. And what they are, it's not just that they're inappropriate, but they're wildly inappropriate. It's just nothing is the same. Nothing is the same.
I like invent whole scenes of movies that didn't happen. It's very strange. So I would never trust Jordan on that one.
I'm very pleased to hear that. I'm not the only one who struggles with memory. There is a fascinating idea about time that's posited in the book, again, from somebody at an event. And without wanting to get these definitions wrong, we have two ideas of how time works. Eternalism, which is the idea that everything that has or ever will happen, happens now, forever and always.
And presentism, which is the idea that only the present moment is what is happening and nothing before or afterwards exists, basically. Jordan can't understand why somebody would believe in presentism when this idea is sort of shared with her. I wondered how you felt about those two ideas and whether your idea about them had changed through the course of writing the book.
Personally, when I first read about that, I just had a horror of presentism. I mean, who doesn't want everything all at once, all the time, forever? I mean, eternity is scary on its own, too. It makes me a little panicky. But nothingness also does. So I feel like I also go back and forth about what I think is the true answer.
And it's probably something, it's probably option C in reality, which we don't know yet. But I think that what Jordan is experiencing in this novel is she has her past, and then when we get to the third part, The past is long gone, but it's starting to swirl and get confused with the present. And so she's experiencing in real time eternalism, I think, in that room, I'll say.
And the past is really, really pushing up and she can feel it. And sometimes there are moments where she can't really separate it. You could say kind of toward the end, she sort of passes through that to more of a presentism situation where she kind of accepts, okay, this is, I am here right now. And that's all I know, yeah.
Is there, I suppose, a sense of relief that comes from only being sort of alive to the present moment and not allowing, as you say, all that stuff that's informed it from muddying the waters too much?
Yeah, I mean, I do think it's the right path, you know, just to be in the moment. I mean, so many religions and philosophies, you know, suggest that, and I... I try to meditate and I think that helps so much, especially in this world that we live in. I do. I think whether... we are experiencing all at once, I think it is to our benefit just to experience it moment by moment.
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