A Maine author’s bestselling book set in Greater Boston is set to become a feature-length movie.
The book is Lily King’s “Writers & Lovers” and it will be made by Topic Studios, the same team behind “Spotlight.”
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According to Deadline Hollywood, Oscar-nominated actress, Toni Collette, of “The Sixth Sense” fame, “is set to mark her feature directorial debut.”
In a tweet on March 11, King said she is “truly thrilled” and that she “could not be more excited to be part of this adventure.”
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She said “Writers & Lovers” is “a novel about taking big risks and here is Toni Collette making a huge leap with it.”
According to publisher Grove Atlantic, the book is about “a former child golf prodigy [who] now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years.”
The description also says the main character, Casey Peabody, “has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan”, has been “blindsided by her mother’s sudden death,” and “she falls for two very different men at the same time.”
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“A lot of people were very excited about ‘Writers & Lovers’ when it came out,” said Amy Beard, the owner of Royal River Books, a bookstore in Yarmouth, Maine, where King once lived.
“She was one of my first customers when I opened in 2008,” Beard explained, adding that King is “just a very humble and wonderful person.”
King’s daughter worked in the bookstore and Beard also hosted the author for store events at a nearby coffee shop.
“I remember when she was talking about the writing process,” recalled Beard, adding that King is “not the type of person who can just write page after page after page,” but instead “jots down her notes and does thoughtful work.”
While Beard has not read “Writers & Lovers” yet, she has read all of King’s prior work, all of which are popular selections at Royal River Books.
“I’m just so happy for her,” Beard said of the movie buzz, adding that “anybody who enjoys a good story” would like King’s work.
“You can really form a connection to her characters and settings, she does a great job with her descriptions and, having spent a lot of her life in Maine, you can really relate to all the landscapes she describes,” Beard said.
