READING GROUP GUIDE (scroll down and click to find the guide)
RECENT NEWS!
ELECTRIC LIT names Paris, 7 A.M. one of 12 Novels about Historical Women to Inspire a Better Future
O THE OPRAH MAGAZINE names Paris, 7 A.M. one of The Best Books by Women of Summer 2019
BBC.com names Paris, 7 A.M. one of Ten Books to Read in June
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY names Paris, 7 A.M. a PW Pick: Books of the Week June 10
ELECTRIC LIT names Paris, 7 A.M. one of 12 Novels about Historical Women to Inspire a Better Future
O THE OPRAH MAGAZINE names Paris, 7 A.M. one of The Best Books by Women of Summer 2019
BBC.com names Paris, 7 A.M. one of Ten Books to Read in June
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY names Paris, 7 A.M. a PW Pick: Books of the Week June 10
Paris, 7 A.M.
The new novel by Liza Wieland--available June 11, 2019, from Simon & Schuster.
“Wieland is a vital voice in contemporary American fiction.” – Colum McCann, author of the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin
June 1937. Elizabeth Bishop, still only a young woman and not yet one of the most influential poets of the 20th century, arrives in France with her college roommates. They have travelled there in search of escape and inspiration, far from the protective world of Vassar College and from the muted sadness Elizabeth feels after having learned of her estranged mother’s death.
At first, Europe proves to be everything Elizabeth and her friends had dreamed of—a place of high art and long history and, for Elizabeth, at least, mysterious women who help her forget her losses. But fascism and occupation are looming. Elizabeth cannot ignore these impending threats, especially after she finds herself in an underground world of rebellion.
Paris, 7 A.M. imagines 1937—the only year Elizabeth, a meticulous keeper of journals, didn’t fully chronicle—in vivid detail. In lush, atmospheric prose, the novel takes the reader on Elizabeth’s journey through the worlds of art, politics, romance, and self-discovery, eventually traveling from Paris to Normandy on a secret errand. Upon her return to Paris, Elizabeth begins to understand what her poems must—and must not—say.
A sensual novel that is as poignant as it is captivating, Liza Wieland’s Paris, 7 A.M. is a beautifully rendered take on the formative years of one of America’s most celebrated—and mythologized—female poets.
PRAISE FOR PARIS, 7 A.M.
“Fittingly for the artist at the story’s center, Wieland’s novel, about Bishop’s time in the City of Lights, is an achingly introspective marvel of lost innocence.”— O Magazine
“With this exquisite novel, Wieland offers a beautifully realized tribute to distinguished American poet Elizabeth Bishop… The novel exhibit[s] its own kind of poetry as it brings its subject's deeply humane, inquisitive, and intelligent sensibility compellingly to life. A triumph.”--Library Journal Starred Review
read full review here
“Striking imagery and sharp, distinctive language shimmer in Wieland’s haunting fifth novel, which imagines American poet Elizabeth Bishop as a young woman…. [Wieland’s] her dreamlike juxtapositions of the searing and the sensual probe the artistic process, the power of the mother-daughter bond, and the creative coming-of-age of one of America’s greatest poets.”--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
read full review here
read Publishers Weekly profile here
“With this exquisite novel, Wieland offers a beautifully realized tribute to distinguished American poet Elizabeth Bishop… The novel exhibit[s] its own kind of poetry as it brings its subject's deeply humane, inquisitive, and intelligent sensibility compellingly to life. A triumph.”--Library Journal, Starred Review
“Wieland’s prose is simultaneously poetic and sparse, much like Bishop’s poems…. In college, Bishop contemplated what it meant to keep her “eyes open” and attain a deeper vision that could reorder pieces of the past and present into coherence, like a cubist painting or modernist collage, a feat she achieved in writing. Wieland’s rendition of Bishop’s life aptly and beautifully mirrors that process.” —Booklist
"Fitting for the poet at this story's heart, Wieland's fifth novel, which follows Elizabeth Bishop as she navigates the City of Lights in the lead up to World War II, is an achingly introspective marvel." --O The Oprah Magazine, The Best LGTBQ Books of 2019
read full article here
"The life of extraordinary poet Elizabeth Bishop is a more than challenging subject for fiction, but Liza Wieland, in this rendering, captures a sensibility that is believable as Bishop’s, complete with its sometimes acerbic lucidity, its wit, and crystalline precision of mind. Paris, 7 a.m. stands with works like Colm Toibin’s The Master in its startlingly credible rendition of the inner life of a great artist of our time." --Madison Smartt Bell, author of Master of the Crossroads and Devil’s Dream
“Inspired by a missing period in poet Elizabeth Bishop's journals, Wieland imagines her adventures in France on the brink of World War II…. Finely written… Wieland creates an unsettled, dread-soaked atmosphere appropriate to the period.”--Kirkus
"Paris, 7 A.M weaves historical facts, biographical speculation, and the plaintive, teasingly playful elements of poems written by one of America’s most beloved 20th-century poets, Elizabeth Bishop—and it is nothing short of wizardry. I am romanced by this story, half true, half re-imagined, about the queer women bohemians of pre-World War II, who dared to resist, create and salvage in the midst of virulent fascism. I love these heroes, as much as I love the true poetry of this daring novel." --Kathy Fagan, author of Sycamore
"Meticulously researched and crisply imagined, biography, history, and poetry come together in this elegant, literary-but-not-too-literary spellbinder. Nothing is left out—Bishop’s love life, her alcoholism, her extraordinarily intense flashbacks from childhood, even her asthma—all are brought to life as Europe descends into war. A masterwork." --Michael White, author of Travels in Vermeer
