What happens to the loves that don't become our lives?
There are some people we leave behind. And then there are the people who somehow remain part of us.
In Heart the Lover, Lily King takes us back to the college years of the writer we first met in Writers & Lovers, when she finds herself drawn into the intense friendship between Sam and Yash.
Books, ambition and intellectual attraction give way to friendship, desire and heartbreak — before the novel carries us forward through the life that follows.
Heart the Lover gave us plenty to talk about: first love, memory, intellectual intimacy, ambition, regret, mortality and the strange persistence of the lives we didn't choose.
And, of course, that final line.
THE BIG QUESTION
Can someone be the love of your life without being the person you build it with?
We're often given a fairly neat version of romantic love: you find the right person, fall in love and build a life together.
But Heart the Lover asks what happens when the love is real and the life goes somewhere else.
Can we deeply love the life we've chosen while still mourning another version of it?
And does a relationship have to last to become one of the defining loves of our lives?
INSIDE THE READING GUIDE
Our Heart the Lover reading guide includes:
10 discussion questions exploring the novel's relationships, characters, themes and ending.
Big ideas including first love, memory, desire, intellectual intimacy, ambition, regret, mortality and the lives not lived.
Further reading and watching for anyone who isn't quite done thinking about it yet.
Free to download for personal and book club use.
A little note from Brunch Book Club
Our discussion guides aren't homework.
They're designed to give you somewhere to start, something to disagree about and a few cultural rabbit holes to disappear down afterwards.
Use all ten questions. Use three. Ignore them entirely because someone has just made an outrageous claim about Natalie and the table needs to investigate immediately.
There are no rules here.
Books. Brunch. Booze. Big conversations.
READ WITH US
Fancy having the conversation with us?
Brunch Book Club is a London-based book club built around brilliant books, good food and the kind of conversations that inevitably continue long after brunch is over.
You can sit with us.