Lily King’s new novel captures the highs and lows of a college romance

In her new novel “Heart the Lover,” set in the 1980s and present day, Lily King wholly captures the highs and the heartbreak of a passionate college romance — one that burned with a white-hot perfection but could not sustain itself beyond the university gates. And because it was ideal in every way except longevity, its imprint may forever be a complicated blend of tenderness and regret.

The tale is told in the first person by a woman nicknamed Jordan (we don’t learn her real name until late in the book). The moniker was bestowed by her two hyper-literary college friends, Yash and Sam. Aiming to be a writer, Jordan had entered college on a golf scholarship; hence “Jordan” after Daisy Buchanan’s athletic pal in “The Great Gatsby.”

Although by the time Jordan meets them, she has given up her scholarship, choosing instead to support herself by waitressing part-time. Readers of King’s 2020 novel “Writers & Lovers,” which takes place in the 1990s, will notice similarities between Jordan and other King principal characters.

Yash and Sam, best friends, are housesitting for a professor on sabbatical. Jordan is soon spending most of her free time with the witty, intellectual Yash and the scholarly, introspective Sam at the professor’s elegantly appointed Victorian. The three spend their time studying, playing cards (the novel’s title is a nod to one of their games), and discussing literature and the writing process with, of course, countless authors name-checked or quoted.

In a classics seminar, Yash debates with his professor on a topic that in retrospect feels prescient. Yash disagrees with the tragic flaw theory underpinning most Greek myths. He contends that most stories turn on a character’s random error of judgment, saying, “the power and poignancy come from the very randomness itself… that we are all vulnerable to tragedy because we are human.”

By the end of college, Jordan, Yash and Sam are forever changed, in profound ways and in equal measure, by both their own character flaws and by the errors in judgment that are an inescapable part of youth.

In the enclosed world of the university, not to mention the world within that world of Yash and Sam’s house, the boundaries between friendship and romance shift and blur. A romance blossoms between Jordan and Sam, but Sam’s short temper and his religion-based guilt about sex eventually cool their ardor. As their relationship deteriorates, Jordan finds herself attracted to Yash in a way that is deeper than anything she has ever felt before. For a time, Jordan and Yash hide their relationship from Sam, upping the dramatic tension among the three friends.

One of many lovely aspects of King’s writing is her ability to convey yearning as an integral component of character, whether it’s fearlessness, as in her 2014 novel “Euphoria,” or melancholy, as in “Writers & Lovers.” At one point in their relationship, Yash is nearly overcome with emotion as he says to Jordan: “It just hurts a little, to feel this good.”

But when things do fall apart between Jordan and Yash, it happens in a spectacular and shocking way.

“Heart the Lover” is King’s sixth novel. Her previous works of fiction have earned multiple awards, including the Kirkus Prize for her 2014 novel “Euphoria” and the Story Prize for her 2021 short story collection “Five Tuesdays in Winter.”

As in her earlier works, “Heart the Lover” has many individual sentences that glow like small gems, as with a character’s sudden awareness of a landscape (“The backyard has been mowed and the air smells sweet and like the past.”), or how an older Jordan, now a wife and mother, considers the loss and legacy of her mother (“She never knew my boys, but she has helped me raise them.”).

Sometimes “Heart the Lover” seems to dance between fiction and real life. Like King, Jordan becomes a novelist. Like King, she grew up in Massachusetts and as an adult settled in Maine.

Pages after the book’s dedication, the fiction portion of the novel opens with an epigram that includes the lines: “You knew I’d write a book about you someday. … I’ll never know how you’d tell it. For me it begins here. Like this.”

“Heart the Lover” is divided into three parts. The long Part 1 comprises the friends’ often-exuberant college years, and King nicely backstops the story with 1980s songs, fashions and theme parties.

The latter two parts of the novel jump ahead decades, to where Jordan is happily married and living in Maine with her husband and children. And then the great love of her youth once again appears in her life. The first time they meet after their long-ago calamitous ending is a believably unsatisfying visit. The next is a few years after that, in a hospital. Wreathed in sadness, the conversations and revelations are so intimate and honest you may feel like an intruder at the bedside. Reaching for a tissue.

Back in their college days, there was a favorite line from “The Aeneid” – “Someday we will remember even these our hardships with pleasure.”

Aeneas had used it as a rallying cry. Considering the achingly poignant arc of “Heart the Lover,” it also fits as a more serene credo, in line with King’s gift for evoking joy, mourning and ultimately, peace.