Paula Hawkins on midlife success and the importance of financial independence

The Shift with Sam Baker

Sam Baker Ltd

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.8 • 525 Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

My guest today is a woman who I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of, but you may not think you have. Her name is Paula Hawkins, but you probably know her as the author of the global bestseller The Girl On The Train. A book she wrote in her early 40s after - I’m sure she won’t mind me saying - an awful lot of also-rans. The girl on the train went on to sell 23 million copies, be published in 50 countries and is one of the top 5 selling hardbacks since records began. It was also turned into a film starring Emily Blunt. But does that level of success - and let’s face it, cash - bring with it massively liberating freedom… or the fear of never being able to live up to your own legend? Paula talks about the shock and salvation of sudden mid-life success when you’re totally broke, the importance of being able to “leave if you need to”, the likability curse that plagues women, why she always knew she didn’t want children and her hopes for her third novel, the taut, tense A Slow Fire Burning, which has some of the best older female characters I’ve read in a long time. You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins and the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by me! The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Jamie Lang and Sophie Haboo have arrived on Disney Plus.
0:04.5	We're having a baby.
0:05.5	We're having a baby.
0:07.2	I've always wanted to be mom.
0:09.4	And we're bringing you on our journey through everything.
0:12.4	I have no idea what we're doing.
0:13.6	Thank you. I have more of an idea.
0:15.6	I think of it like a Tamagocchi.
0:17.8	At the end of all of this...
0:20.0	We're going to have a little baby.
0:21.8	Raising Chelsea, a Hulu original series streaming exclusively on Disney Plus.
0:27.3	18 plus subscription required T's and T supply.
0:34.8	Hello and welcome to The Shift, the podcast that aims to tell the no-holds bar truth about being a woman post-40, created and hosted by me, journalist and author Sam Baker.
0:45.4	My guest today is a woman I'm pretty sure you've heard of, but you may not think you have.
0:49.5	Her name is Paula Hawkins, but you probably know her as the author of the global bestseller, The Girl on the
0:55.0	Train, a book she wrote in her early 40s after, I'm sure she won't mind me saying, an awful lot of
1:01.0	also-rans. The Girl on the Train went on to sell 23 million copies, be published in 50 countries,
1:08.3	and is one of the top five selling hardbacks since records began.
1:12.2	It was also turned into a film starring Emily Blunt.
1:15.0	I was also suddenly in demand and I had to travel all the time and I was not a public
1:19.1	figure but people recognised my name and I was being asked to interviews all the time.
1:24.1	So it was a very steep learning curve I I think, in a lot of ways.
	...

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