Lily King, Heart the Lover

 

- Lily King is the bestselling American author of six novels, including Euphoria and Writers and Lovers. This new novel is the first of hers I've read, and I'm so glad I did.  

- It's an enthralling and delightful story about college students and their relationships, sexual interactions and breakups. And their lives two decades later, where there are new elements - family, sadness, illness and death. 

- Miss Jordan Baker meets two young men, Sam and Yash, in her first year of college in Minnesota. They are studying literature and the Latin and Greek classics. She and Sam become intimate, but Sam is very religious and refuses to have sex with her. They inevitably break up. 

- She then falls for Yash, who is of Indian heritage, and they indulge in sex constantly. After graduation she accepts a job offer in a restaurant in Paris, but Yash can’t go. She stays with Lea, who says ‘these decisions we make in youth are everything…Marry him and have your babies. It doesn’t matter what happens after that’. 

- Yash decides to go to New York, and he barely writes to her. She finally decides to join him and they arrange to meet up at the airport. But he doesn’t arrive. She’s also recently learnt that she's pregnant. 

- In Part Two it's twenty-one years later. We learn that her baby was adopted out to French parents. She's married to Silas and they have two boys. Yash went to law school and now has a legal career. She’s never told Yash about their baby. 

- Unfortunately Yash gets cancer. She and Sam meet up again when they’re visiting Yash in hospital. Sam is married with kids but still very close to Yash. The three of them talk about their lives together as friends and the deep memories they share. ‘The two of you were my real education’ she tells them. 

- Her husband Silas urges her to tell Yash about his child, but she’s afraid it will hurt him. At the same time Jack, her sick son, is scheduled for brain stem surgery in a few days. 

- The novel ends with immense sadness and sensitivity. But we're reminded of the beauty and courage in all of us as we confront our challenges.   

-(By the way this has to be one of the ugliest covers I’ve seen ever!)