Lily King
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Lily, welcome to Waterstones.
Thank you, Will. I'm happy to be here.
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.
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.
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