Lily King's new novel constructs an erotically charged love triangle

Maureen Corrigan

November 03, 2025 / 10:57 am

Earlier this month, I kept picking up and putting down Lily King's new novel, Heart the Lover. I love King's writing but the opening section was hard for me to take — not in a grisly Cormac McCarthy or scary Stephen King kind of way — but in an "Ugh, I remember being that girl, that age" kind of way.

Heart the Lover opens in a college class of the 1980s. The professor, a man, is teaching 17th-century British literature and he's selected a student's essay — a creative piece — to read aloud. But, first, he holds up the essay to remark on "its vulgar packaging" — the fact that it's typed on "neon-orange" paper.

The embarrassed student-author is a young woman nicknam

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