Lily Meyer on sex, Judaism, antisemitism and her new book

There is a lot of sex in Lily Meyer’s latest book, The End of Romance. A lot of sex. However, it could never be described flippantly as a “romp”. The literary novel follows the life of Sylive Broder and delicately deals with number of different and difficult subjects, from abuse, friendship and love to feminism and, ultimately, the meaning of romance itself. It is an enchanting, engaging read. The kind of book you get lost in without ever being allowed to get too comfortable.

Meyer is a Washington DC native and still lives there. “Interesting times here, for sure,” she tells me, in her softly spoken manner. Unlike many in DC, she has never wanted to be a politician or a lobbyist. Instead, “I’ve wanted to be a writer my whole life. Starting really before I can remember. If I’m not actively writing, things go poorly for me.”

That single mindedness has certainly paid off. She has become a staff writer on the prestigious magazine The Atlantic, alongside working as a translator and critic. The End of Romance is her second novel, following A Short War, published in 2024. None of this is really surprising. Alongside evident natural talent, Meyer was raised by two journalists and “grew up in a house full of books.”

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Meyer also spent time studying in the UK, earning her MA at the University of East Anglia. During that time living in Norwich, “I really was aware of how few Jews were around me,” she recalls.

Meyer reveals that “almost nothing in The End of Romance is autobiographical, but one thing that does come from my life is the intellectual relationship that Sylvie has with her grandfather, which I had both with my own grandfather and also with my father.”

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The granddaughter-grandfather relationship in the book is depicted with real tenderness. It made me miss my own grandfather.

Without spoiling too much, after escaping an abusive marriage and returning to post-graduate study, Sylvie decides romance is dead. Private relationships are fine, and sex is definitely fine, but romance of the public sort is not. Meyer says she made sex a fundamental pillar of the book because “it’s a fundamental pillar of life”.

She continues: “We communicate and learn so much through it that I find it a part of life that is unrealistic to leave out and also really interesting to put in. Also… literary fiction in the last 10 years or so, I think, has broadly been pretty sexless and this is especially true in the United States.”

Judaism – Jewishness, really – flows through the heart of the book too. Sylvie has the kind of secular Jewish life many reading this piece will relate to. The character clearly cares deeply about that heritage, not least because of the link it provides to her beloved grandparents. At one point, she is offended at how ‘Christmassy’ her Jewish boyfriend’s family’s Christmas celebrations are, as if they are copping out in some way.

Judaism is very obviously important to Lily, certainly in the cultural sense. She has brought her daughter up Jewish and attends shul on the High Holy Days and her father’s yahrzeit. These are touchstones that truly matter to her.

However, she is seemingly less concerned than many others by the spike in antisemitism we’ve seen since October 7.

“The current level of antisemitism, while I don’t want to minimise it, I think has been wildly overblown and exploited by politicians,” she says. “In the United States, I think the threat of politicians, including the president, overblowing antisemitism and using it as an excuse for very illiberal behaviours, is so much more frightening than scattered incidents of antisemitism.”

She explains that “I do not take antisemitic violence lightly. Obviously, I don’t condone it. However, it is not a threat to all Jews all the time.”

One might argue that it being a threat to any Jew at any time is problem enough and it should be taken seriously by the political class either side of the Atlantic. Indeed, I am confident that Meyer agrees with that basic principle. Sadly, though, her comments feel like a repetition of the trope that antisemitism is being weaponised, making for an uncomfortable moment towards the end of an otherwise pleasant and interesting conversation.

Expanding on the theme, she argues that there have been attempts to censor education institutions under the guise of tackling antisemitism. “The president is trying to censor, control and manipulate universities,” she says. “For example, claiming that Harvard is institutionally antisemitic. Never mind that it has many Jews in positions of power, many Jewish students, many Jewish professors, and has for generations. The White House is using antisemitism to try to manipulate a major research university or perhaps to silence voices within it.”

(President Trump is seeking $1 billion in damages as part of an ongoing battle with Harvard. He has also revoked around $2 billion in research grants to the university as well as freezing its federal funding, accusing it of allowing antisemitic violence on campus and “feeding a lot of nonsense” to The New York Times.)

“These accusations of antisemitism, of course, are all about freedom to criticise Israel or the Israeli government, which I do publicly. I want to be able to continue to do publicly,”  she says.

Lily Meyer is a beautiful writer who has written a beautiful novel that skilfully examines some of the very fundamentals of being human. The End of Romance is soft and spiky, engaging and frustrating. Rather like its author.

The End of Romance is published by Verve Books, £10