
Itâs the night of the much-anticipated Met Gala, and everyone from Anna Wintour to John Galliano has descended on the ornate Great Hall. The party is, as one character remarks, âjust like a magazine come to life!â
But as bottles are drained and plates cleared, the evening devolves into a well-dressed bacchanal. Kitty Foil, a tiny teen actress who had taken one too many trips to the bathroom to âpowder her nose,â starts to bemoan how sheâs been âbox blocked,â which, if you donât know, is like âcock blocking but with girls.â
So, she does what any straight-thinking socialite would do: She kicks off her Jimmy Choos, straps on a pair of roller skates, and begins careening around the party.
The characters in Mercury are so specific and true to real life that one of Froelichâs friends recently called her in a panic. âI canât believe you put my boss in your book!â
It may be hard to believe, but this scene has actually happened. Itâs happened to Paula Froelich, author of Mercury in Retrograde, and deputy editor of Page Six at the New York Post.
âIf I need inspiration,â she says, âall I need to do is look at the stacks of old Page Six.â The pages of the loved and feared New York Post gossip columnâwhich represent Froelichâs countless numbers of nights out in New Yorkâare now embalmed in containers under her desk.

But she barely needed to refer to them when writing Mercury, her new debut novel. Thatâs because the book is filled with fragments of her own stranger-than-fiction career: the parties sheâs attended, the people sheâs met, and, more often than not, little discoveries sheâs made about herself along the way.
Mercury in Retrograde is a book about three women who all come to New York and end up living in the same SoHo buildingâat Froelichâs actual address. Thereâs Penelope Mercury, the hard-bitten journalist for a Post-like New York Telegraph, Lena âLipstick Carcrashâ Lippencrass, a socialite finally cut off from her family, and Dana Gluck, a workaholic lawyer whose husband leaves her for a model.
The book feels so much like a blind item that itâs become somewhat of a sport for Froelich, who dared readers on The Huffington Post to guess the identities of her characters. âAfter all,â she wrote, âin order for the writing to feel true, you have to have lived part of it.â The post generated guesses that everyone from Anna Wintour to Mort Zuckerman was fictionalized in the book. The winner of Froelichâs challenge (another identity she wouldnât disclose) won tickets to her book party, which was hosted by her friend and Glamour editor, Cindi Leive.
The characters in Mercury are so specific and true to real life that one of Froelichâs friends recently called her in a panic. âI canât believe you put my boss in your book!â she said. âOh honey,â Froelich said. âThatâs not your boss.â The character, she explained, was a hybrid of two other well-known editors.
All of this real-life character study has made Froelich nothing short of an expert. âOh honey,â she says again, âI have a Ph.D. in human nature at this point. I can tell you why people are doing things, whatâs the reasoning, what their level of education is, if their parents are divorced or not. Just within two minutes.â
Thereâs a Sex and the City and Lipstick Jungle quality to this book, as each woman represents a different kind of woman in pursuit of happiness in the big city. But Mercury is different from other chick lit in that itâs not all about, as Froelich puts it, âthe ring or the guy.â In developing each of her characters, Froelich isnât just sketching out archetypal women, like Miranda, Samantha, or even Carrie. Sheâs hashing out different pieces of herself, as each of her characters comes to resemble a different strain of her own life in New York.
Sheâs lived the life of the young beat reporter, the professional who wants a family, and that of the New York social fixtureâwhoâs as much the life of the party just as she is a party reporter. What better way to express that one woman can do it all than have her embodied in three different successful urban women?
Multitasking has become second nature to Froelich, who often has several projects going at once. She says that she wakes up every day at 6 a.m. to work on her book and gets to the office by 10. After a full day at work, she rushes home to feed Karl, her squat dachshund, and to get ready for the evening. Then sheâs out the door again for cocktails, a dinner, or a party. And then the day repeats (the 6 a.m. part probably dependent on how much fun sheâs had the night before).
Because of Mercuryâs release, itâs been a whirlwind week for Froelichâfar busier than the usual routine of book-work-Karl-party. Sheâs had a series of glittery book parties, interviews, and even an appearance on The View.
But as the dust begins to settle, Froelich hasnât slowed down one bit. âIâve barely had time to change my underwear,â she says. Sheâs already hard at work on a young adult book called Grits, about her teen years at a convent in Kentucky. âOh honey,â she says. âI was the only Jew and one of the only virgins in my graduating class!â
And, as any multitasking New York woman would, Froelichâs also working on a sequel for Mercury in Retrograde. Though sheâs only written the first chapter, she has the second installment of the book almost entirely mapped out. But thatâs not to say, of course, that the juicy details of last nightâs party couldnât find their way onto its pages. âThe book is more about female friendships and how women evolve, and how friendships evolve,â she says. âWhat happens today could totally make it in tomorrow.â
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Isabel Wilkinson is a Daily Beast intern who attends Columbia Journalism School. She has written for New York magazine and Womenâs Wear Daily.