A New York Times Novel Everyone Will Be Talking About This Summer
'Is anything more dangerous than a fragile male ego?' New York Times
'Nerve-wrackingly fun' Vogue, Best Books of the Year So Far
Steven Hammer was once a literary star. Now, his career is floundering, his marriage to high-powered banker Lucy is crumbling, and the only bright spot in his life is Astrid, the Norwegian au pair who cares for their children – and reveres his neglected novels. But what begins as a secret infatuation soon spirals into a scandal that makes them both infamous.
As a headline-grabbing trial captivates the world with a salacious story of sex, power, and betrayal, Steven must confront the wreckage he’s created – and the deeper insecurities that fuelled it. Is Astrid an innocent young woman caught up in a case beyond her control, or a calculating femme fatale? And how far will he go, driven by desperation and obsession, for her professed love?
With propulsive momentum, sharp wit and sly, lucid prose, The Au Pair is a sleek literary thriller about failure, desire, and the unravelling of a man as he grapples with his fading relevance – when the lies others spin pale beside the fictions we tell ourselves.
Perfect for fans of The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair and Fleishman is in Trouble
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Praise for The Au Pair:
'Wayne, perhaps no surprise, is an expert guide into the complex psyche of an author. He is also a deft social satirist, no more than when skewering his characters' politically correct pretensions' Wall Street Journal
‘The Au Pair is Teddy Wayne at his immensely readable best. The plot ratchets up in the creepiest, most chilling way while deliciously skewering the Brooklyn literary set. It’s a book you’ll tear through, one that leaves you guessing until the last page’ Maria Semple, author of Go Gentle
‘This compulsive thriller gleefully and skilfully skewers both stereotypical tropes and the contemporary publishing landscape’ Boston Globe
‘The reigning king of taut literary novels… Wayne knows how to write about men in a way that few modern writers are capable of pulling off… this is one you won’t be able to put down’ Men's Journal
‘You may think you know where it’s going, this novel about a disappointed writer, his frosty wife, and a comely young nanny. You may be in for a surprise. Propulsive but also insightful – and funny, in its merciless skewering of midlife, marriage, and more – The Au Pair cements Teddy Wayne’s status as a master of the wicked little literary thriller’ Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
‘A heart-pounding mystery that reads like a movie’ People
‘An ingenious dissection of marriage, masculinity, and privilege, propelled by a gimlet-eyed wit… A sly, unsettling hybrid of social satire and domestic thriller’ Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
‘[A] tightly constructed, endlessly exhilarating thriller’ Town & Country
‘I could not put it down. I raced through it’ Jennifer Weiner
‘Teddy Wayne has written a book about selling out that doesn’t—a guilty pleasure that earns its guilt. The Au Pair is a canny seduction wrapped in a page-turning thriller wrapped in an elegy for the literary novel: a threefold delight’ Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Homeland Elegies and The Radiance
About the Author :
Teddy Wayne is the author of the novels The Au Pair, The Winner, The Great Man Theory, Apartment, Loner, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, and Kapitoil. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship as well as a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, PEN/Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. A former columnist for the New York Times and McSweeney’s and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he has taught at Columbia University and Washington University in St. Louis. He has developed films and series from his novels with Columbia Pictures, HBO, MGM Television, and others. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the writer Kate Greathead, and their children.
Review :
'I tore through The Au Pair in a single day and lamented only that it wasn't twice as long. I hunger for literary thrillers with clean, lovely sentences that are also generous with the goods: narrative and erotic tension, plot twists, and a sly sense of humour about their characters. Teddy Wayne delivered, yet again, on all counts’ Melissa Febos, bestselling author of Girlhood and The Dry Season
‘A sharp domestic thriller… An intricate look at the perils of seeking admiration. Readers will be hard-pressed to put this down’ Publishers Weekly
‘Wayne is not upending noir so much as paying a sneaky contemporary homage. You’ll toss it across the room in maddening disbelief, then quickly pick it up and keep reading’ Chicago Tribune
‘A suspenseful mystery with both expected and unexpected plot twists… With his descriptive skill and insightful humour, Wayne elevates a potentially stereotypical setup into an examination of ego, professional disappointment, and self-delusion’ Library Journal
‘A slow-burn, messy look at modern marriage… One can’t look away’ Booklist
‘Subtly subversive, thoroughly enjoyable’ Air Mail
‘America’s preeminent novelist of male entitlement, specializing in guys who think they’re doing the right thing while being blinkered to the bigger picture’ Washington Post
‘A page-turning novel of ruthless ambition’ The New Yorker, on The Winner
‘A lean, careening thrill… One of my favourite books of the year’ Megan Nolan on The Winner
‘One of those uncommon novels that really is novel’ Jonathan Franzen, on Kapitoil
‘Teddy Wayne has an uncanny ability to teleport to another location and inhabit the people who live there… A tightly written, memorable short novel’ Meg Wolitzer, on Loner
‘Sexy, breathless and brutal’ Julia May Jonas, on The Winner
‘Full of keenly observed, stinging insights that compound in intensity long after the initial read’ Ling Ma, on Apartment
