"The Sequel" by Jean Hanff Korelitz

 

Back in July, 2021 (was it really that one ago?) I wrote THIS REVIEW of Jean Hanff Korelitz' novel "The Plot".  As you may remember, or will see if you click on the link, I thought it was terrific book, and I gave it a full Four Star Grandstander rating.  Three years later, Ms Korelitz has cranked out a follow-up to that great book, and it is called, fittingly, "The Sequel".

This in indeed a sequel, although it includes a whole new cast of characters. It takes place several years after the time setting of "The Plot", and the main character from that novel, Jake Bonner, is now dead, a suicide victim, and the protagonist in this one is his widow, Anna Williams-Bonner.   

Living the good life off of the earnings from Jake's blockbuster best-seller, Anna decides to write a novel of her own, and THAT novel becomes a best-seller, but not just a best-seller.  It is a literary best-seller.  And guess what happens, Anna starts receiving threatening anonymous messages just like Jake did.  Could it involve something about the story Jake used to pen his best-seller, and could Anna herself have played a part in the events surrounding that story?  How could she?  She didn't even know Jake back then, right?

I wish that I could say that I liked "The Sequel" as much as I did "The Plot", but, alas, I cannot.  I thought this one was a bit too convoluted as Korelitz wound through the stories within the stories of this particular Story.   The notes on the dust jacket of the book tells us that Korelitz "gives the readers an antihero to root for while illuminating and satirizing the world of publishing."  As to the first part of that, I am not sure that Anna is someone that you want to "root for"; you can draw your own conclusions if you read this.

As to the second part, as I read this, I wondered of the main point of the novel was to skewer the world of book publishing, and taking shots at the snobbery among writers and publishers concerning works of so-called "literary fiction" versus "genre fiction", and I'm still not totally sure upon which side Korelitz sits.

A disappointing Two Stars from The Grandstander.

Book Review - "The Plot" by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Jacob Finch Bonner was a once promising novelist.  His debut novel, The Invention of Wonder, was a hit among the literati, and it even got him included in the "New and Noteworthy" column of the New York Times Book Review.  Trouble is, Jake has had a hard time coming up with a follow up.  His second book, a collection of short stories, bombed, a third book couldn't get published, and another novel has been gestating on his laptop for years.

So this is why Jake now finds himself teaching a three week writers-in-residence MFA course at a third tier college in Vermont.  He's been doing it for four years now, and every year he cringes at the vapidity of the work that these would be writers turn into him every year.  He hates what he's doing, but, hey, a guy has to eat, right?

Then an obnoxious jerk of a student named Evan Parker shows up in the program.  He's not sure why he's there, because he has a story in mind with a Plot that no one has ever come up with before, a story so great, that it is sure to be a best seller, an Oprah Book Club selection, and a Hollywood blockbuster.  "Yeah, right", Jake thinks to himself, "just who does this blowhard think he is?"  Then in a one-on-one session with Jake, Evan tells him The Story, and Jake is astonished.  If this horse's ass of a student can ever get around to actually writing this tale, it might just become everything he says is will, so terrific is this Story, this Plot.

Flash forward a couple of years, Jake is still struggling.  His MFA Writers in Residence Program has been reduced to an online course, and his struggles to write anything, anything at all, are worse than ever.  Quite by accident, he discovers that Evan Parker is dead, that he actually died shortly after the class that Jake taught concluded, and that he never had the chance to write the book that would tell that amazing story that he spoke of to Jake.  It would be a sin to let that terrific Plot just die with Evan, so, after some internal struggle, Jake takes the idea and runs with it.  He changes the names and the locales, but The Plot remains, and he, Jake, then writes the novel, Crib, that will change his life.

Crib  is a sensation.  Millions of copies sold, #1 on all best seller lists, paperback sales will only add to the sales figures, talk show appearances, speaking gigs, and, oh, yeah, Steven Spielberg is going to make the movie version of it. Everything that Evan Parker said would happen to his Story, has happened, only it is happening to Jake Bonner.

Then, one day out of nowhere, Jake receives an email that simply says.....You are a thief.

Who owns an idea? is a central thread of this novel that author Jean Hanff Korelitz explores.  Jake didn't steal Parker's work, nor did he plagiarize it, since Parker never actually had the chance to write it.  If someone else takes the skeleton of an idea and fleshes it out, is that wrong or immoral?  Somebody thinks so, and what is Jacob Finch Bonner going to do about it?

I am not going to say anymore about the plot of "The Plot" because it would be hard to do so without spoiling it for the reader, but let me tell you, the format that Korelitz uses - she intersperses pages from Crib within "The Plot" to advance the story - is ingenious and it sets up a twist that you will never see coming.  Well, actually, I did see it coming - on page 296 of this 320 page book!  It was only then that I "got" it.

It was a review of this book that I read in the Washington Post that made me seek this one out at the library, and I am glad that I did.  I have to tell you that this first 70 or so pages of this book move a bit slowly and are filled with a lot of Jake's literary claptrap of ideas, but that is what sets up the thrilling ride that Korelitz then takes us on.

Don't miss this one.  Four Stars from The Grandstander.

Post Script - Jean Hanff Korelitz wrote a novel "You Should Have Known" which was turned into the terrific HBO series of last year, "The Undoing."  That was another factor that caused me to seek out "The Plot."  She has written several other novels that sound like they, too, would be worth reading.