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New York Times Bestseller

IndieBound Bestseller

by Jean Hanff Korelitz ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 2021

Gripping and thoroughly unsettling: This one will be flying off the shelves.

A washed-up novelist finds bestselling success with a story purloined from an arrogant student. What could possibly go wrong?

Pretty much everything in Korelitz’s satisfyingly twisty thriller. But at first, when Jacob Finch Bonner learns about the sudden death of Evan Parker, the jerk who'd swaggered into his office at a 10th-rate low-residency MFA program and shared the outrageous plot premise that was going to make him rich and famous, it seems as though taking the idea and making it his own is perfectly safe. Three years later, the resulting novel, Crib , has sold 2 million copies in nine months, and Jake has met wonderful Anna Williams, the program director of a radio show he visits while on tour in Seattle. But then he gets an email from [email protected] proclaiming, “You are a thief,” and his new life threatens to unravel. Korelitz teasingly alternates the story of Jake’s desperate quest to find out who this anonymous accuser is and how he knows about Evan’s idea with chapters from Crib —just enough to stoke curiosity about what exactly this fabulous plot device is. Alert readers will guess some of the twists in advance as Jake follows the trail to Evan’s family home in Vermont and slowly realizes Evan didn’t invent this shocking story but lifted it from the real life of someone who is very, very angry about it; Korelitz plays fair and plants clues throughout. But only the shrewdest will anticipate the jaw-dropping final revelation. (Hint: Think about those Talented Mr. Ripley references.) Korelitz, who demonstrated in Admission (2009) and You Should Have Known (2014) that she knows how to blend suspense with complex character studies, falls a little short on the character end here; Jake is a sympathetic but slightly bland protagonist, and Anna has the only other fully developed personality. No one will care as the story hurtles toward the creepy climax, in the best tradition of Patricia Highsmith and other chroniclers of the human psyche’s darkest depths.

Pub Date: May 11, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-250-79076-7

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021

LITERARY FICTION | THRILLER | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION

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by Jean Hanff Korelitz

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SEEN & HEARD

BOOK TO SCREEN

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

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by Max Brooks

THE HOUSE ACROSS THE LAKE

by Riley Sager ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2022

A weird, wild ride.

Celebrity scandal and a haunted lake drive the narrative in this bestselling author’s latest serving of subtly ironic suspense.

Sager’s debut, Final Girls (2017), was fun and beautifully crafted. His most recent novels— Home Before Dark (2020) and Survive the Night (2021) —have been fun and a bit rickety. His new novel fits that mold. Narrator Casey Fletcher grew up watching her mother dazzle audiences, and then she became an actor herself. While she never achieves the “America’s sweetheart” status her mother enjoyed, Casey makes a career out of bit parts in movies and on TV and meatier parts onstage. Then the death of her husband sends her into an alcoholic spiral that ends with her getting fired from a Broadway play. When paparazzi document her substance abuse, her mother exiles her to the family retreat in Vermont. Casey has a dry, droll perspective that persists until circumstances overwhelm her, and if you’re getting a Carrie Fisher vibe from Casey Fletcher, that is almost certainly not an accident. Once in Vermont, she passes the time drinking bourbon and watching the former supermodel and the tech mogul who live across the lake through a pair of binoculars. Casey befriends Katherine Royce after rescuing her when she almost drowns and soon concludes that all is not well in Katherine and Tom’s marriage. Then Katherine disappears….It would be unfair to say too much about what happens next, but creepy coincidences start piling up, and eventually, Casey has to face the possibility that maybe some of the eerie legends about Lake Greene might have some truth to them. Sager certainly delivers a lot of twists, and he ventures into what is, for him, new territory. Are there some things that don’t quite add up at the end? Maybe, but asking that question does nothing but spoil a highly entertaining read.

Pub Date: June 21, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-593-18319-9

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022

PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION

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by Riley Sager

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Spoiler Discussion for The Plot

Did you read The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz and need a plot (ha!) summary or want to discuss the book with someone who has read it? Here’s my Spoiler Discussion for The Plot

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Published by Celadon Books on May 11, 2021.

Thanks to the publisher for the advance copy for review. This post will contain affiliate links.

Spoiler Discussion of the Plot – Table of Contents

Plot Summary for The Plot: Jacob’s Narrative

Synopsis: The Crib by Jacob Bonner – the story within the story. This is Jacob’s fictionalization.

Added in April 2023: Movie News: The Plot is Coming to Hulu!

Plot Synopsis for The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz: Jacob’s Narrative

Jacob Bonner is a writer who published a well-received debut book but whose career is now floundering.

While teaching at a writing seminar at Ripley College, Jacob meets Evan Parker, a cocky aspiring writer.

Evan tells Jacob he’s writing a book that will be a guaranteed success. Intrigued and jealous,Jacob gets Even to explain his plot idea.

A year or two later, Jacob’s writing career is still stagnant. He decides to look up Evan and discovers Evan has died.

Jacob decides he will write a book based on Evan’s idea. There are no original ideas and a plot that interesting deserves to be told, right?

Three years later, Jacob’s book, The Crib, is on the bestseller list and has been optioned for a movie. He’s having a long distance friendship with Anna, a TV producer he met on a book promotion interview in Seattle. 

Jacob starts receiving anonymous messages through his website from someone called Talented Tom who says they know what Jacob stole and who he stole it from. 

Alarmed, Jacob decides to try to figure out Tom’s identity. He finds a message on Evan’s online memorial page from Martin, a fellow student in the MFA class. He Google stalks Martin and also finds a Ripley alumni page on which Evan had posted.

Jake’s publisher is pressing him to finish his new book. Meanwhile “Talented Tom” starts tweeting things about Jacob not being the author of Crib. Anna moves to NYC and Jake’s relationship with her gets more serious.

Talented Tom’s posts are getting some traction and his publisher calls him in to talk. They decide to sue Talented Tom as a way to uncover his identity. But the publisher’s legal threats have the opposite effect: Tom gets even more attention.

Anna and Jake are married and soon after, Tom sends a threatening letter to Jacob’s home.

Jake meets with Martin, who doesn’t think Evan showed his work to anyone, and visits the Parker family tavern.

The bartender says that Evan Parker was not a nice person. He also mentions that Evan’s parents died from carbon monoxide poisoning and that his sister Dianna died in a fire. The only living family member is Dianna ‘s child, Rose, who left town.

We now realize that Jacob’s story, about a woman who kills her teenage daughter and assumes her identity, is based on Evan’s family.

Jake stole Evan’s story, but the story he stole is the real-life story of Evan’s sister Dianna, her teen pregnancy, and her murder of (and then impersonation of) her daughter Rose.

Tom starts researching Evan’s family and finds out that “Rose” (actually Dianna) sold the family house and then vanished.

The lawyer who handled the house sale remembers was that “Rose” attended college in Georgia.

Anna calls, extremely upset as she found out about the plagiarism scandal. She can’t believe Jacob didn’t tell her.

Jacob travels to Georgia and finds out that Rose attended the University of Georgia but didn’t graduate. He visits the lawyer who represented Rose in the real estate transaction and threatens him by suggesting that Rose was involved in Evan’s death. 

Jacob stays in town to do more research. He goes to the apartment complex where Rose lived and finds an employee who remembered her. He shows her Rose’s high school yearbook picture and she says that isn’t Rose. This confirms that Jacob is right: “Rose” is her mother Dianna.

He finds a newspaper account of Dianna’s death, which says that she was camping with her sister Rose (age 26) and died in a fire caused by a propane heater. He goes to the campground where Diandra allegedly died. Two local men Jacob talks to realize he is referencing the plot of his own book and think he’s a crackpot.

Jacob now sees a way out of his plagiarism scandal: he will re-write the story as true crime.

Spoiler: who is Talented Tom in The Plot?

Jake arrives home and Anna has made soup for him, an old family recipe.

She’s leaving soon on a red-eye flight to Seattle, but sits with him while he eats.

Then Jacob tells her he stole Evan’s story but might have gotten some the details wrong in his novel.

Anna laughs at him. She says that she wasn’t going to kill Jake until he started playing detective. She drugged his soup and now she gives him a bunch more pills and, as she waits for him die, confesses everything.

Yes, Anna is Dianna.

She was always jealous of her brother Evan, the golden child. She was responsible for her parents’ death.

The carbon monoxide monitor kept going off and Anna/Dianna replaced the batteries with dead ones. She killed her daughter Rose in the fire (but told authorities Rose was her sister).

Dianna gave up everything, sacrificed everything for Rose, who was never affectionate and always ungrateful.

She killed her brother Evan too, when he started making noises about selling the house.

Also, she heard Evan was going go to try to be a writer. Then she discovered that Evan had written 200 pages of her story. Evan was a heavy drug user, so Dianna faked an overdose and killed him.

Dianna left Georgia and went to Washington State where she heard about Jacob’s book. She couldn’t figure out how someone had found out her story. After she read Jacob’s book, she was furious. It wasn’t his story to tell. So she engineered a meeting with him.

Anna/Dianna shows Jacob a suicide note she wrote for him, one that references the terrible plagiarism scandal . She leaves and Jacob dies. As his wife, she takes over his literary estate and tells and interviewer she’s thinking of becoming a writer herself.

Plot Summary for The Plot: Jacob’s Version in the Crib

Remember, this isn’t what really happened. It’s just Jacob’s fictionalized version of the plot Evan told him. It’s interspersed with Jacob’s narrative as a way to slowly reveal Evan’s plot.

Samantha, a teenager, gets pregnant by her mom’s boss. She eventually drops out of high school and has her baby, a girl named Maria.

Both of Samantha’s parents die.

Maria is a very independent child. When she’s a sophomore in high school, Samantha gets a call from the guidance counselor, who says that Maria is going to graduate early and go to college.

Samantha finds a college acceptance in her daughter’s room. After all the sacrifices Samantha made, Maria is planning to leave her.

The two argue. Samantha grabs Maria and in the struggle, Maria’s head hits the bedpost and she dies. Samantha packs up all their stuff, buries her daughter’s body in the woods, and leaves town.

In Jacob’s book, Samantha also kills Maria’s girlfriend Gab who won’t stop looking for her. She poisons Gab, who is allergic to nuts, with peanut butter hidden in a pizza. Interesting – was Jacob predicting his own death? That was some foreshadowing I definitely picked up on.

Did you find the pace of The Plot too slow?

A lot of readers have remarked that they found the pace draggy and were even bored.

This story does take some time to set up and is more of the Big Twist plot model in which the whole story is set-up for that Big Twist.

I didn’t like Jake much, but I was invested in his story from the outset and wanted to see what would happen next.

Did you guess who Talented Tom was?

I mean, there wasn’t anyone else it could be! I briefly considered Martin but … nah. Jacob’s agent? Nah. I think this book could have used a few more suspects.

I still thought this was a good twist and I really liked the set-up of this. Jacob thinks he stole a fictional plot, but actually stole a real one.

Did you catch all the literary references?

James, in comments, does a good job of summing up the Marilynne Robinson Homecoming references (and even found a new one). I haven’t read The Talented Mr. Ripley but I bet there are some more Easter eggs in there that I haven’t noticed.

Did you see the ending coming?

I briefly thought that Anna might be like hey, let’s live happily ever after off the money from The Crib. But Jake had already gone around poking his nose in and blabbing to everyone so I suspected he was going to be Dianna’s next victim.

I mean, Anna/Dianna had to kill him to protect herself and keep the secret of all the murders she committed.

Plus, in Jake’s own book, The Crib, he has Gab, a nosy character who just can’t stop poking around looking for her missing girlfriend Maria. Gab is killed by Maria’s mom, also with food.

Movie News: The Plot is coming to Hulu!

The Plot will be adapted into a streaming series on Hulu. No release date has been announced.

Here’s what we know:

Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Green Book) will produce and star.

Abby Ajayi (Inventing Anna) will adapt the book into a script and act as show runner.

By making Jake a Black man, the series will be able to explore issues of authorship and appropriation with even more nuance.

So far, there have been no other casting decisions announced, but stay tuned!

Thanks for reading this Spoiler Discussion for the Plot

What other books would you recommend to fans of The Plot?

If you like the “meta” aspect of the story, check out my List of Story Within a Story thrillers.

Here’s my list of books that remind me a bit of The Plot:

Yellowface by R. F. Huang

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

The Likeness by Tana French

Dream Girl by Laura Lippman

Join my other Spoiler Discussion Posts!

You can find my most recent book discussion posts here and an alphabetical list of Spoiler Discussion Posts here.

What I found especially enjoyable about this novel is that the two key riddles (the identity of Talented Tom and the fact that Anna is actually Evan’s sister) are solvable by literary references (perhaps appropriate for a book about books). It’s clear from the outset that Talented Tom must be a member of the Parker family, and initially, based on the information in Evan’s obituary, Rose is the obvious candidate since she’s supposedly the sole surviving member of the family. Jake doesn’t take the Highsmith reference far enough, however, since he thinks it’s simply meant to call out his association with Ripley College. But what does Tom Ripley do in the Talented Mr. Ripley ? He assumes the identity of his victim, just as Dianna did with Rose.   As for Anna, even the brief account she gives of her past to Jake during their first conversation is enough to make the reader realize that she’s ‘stealing’ the plot of Marilynne Robinson’s Homecoming and passing it off as her own backstory, with a few modifications. This is further highlighted when Anna cites Marilynne Robinson as one of her favorite writers in response to Jake’s question about what she likes to read, also during that first conversation. She later makes the deception even more explicit, by claiming that she grew up in Rawbone, Iowa—a town that exists only in the pages of Robinson’s novel (she mocks Jake at the end for not having picked up on this). There are no innocent literary borrowings in this novel, so those references are bright red flags that Anna is not who she seems.

One other interesting point: Marilynne Robinson grew up in a small town in Bonner County, Iowa, and I can only assume that the name ‘Jake Bonner’ is intended to further reinforce the importance of the Robinson references to the plot of The Plot !

I suspected Anna as well. I read Homecoming years and years ago so I didn’t recognize her life story as a literary reference, but Anna wass the only one who could be Talented Tom. And, like you, I was familiar with the plot of The Talented Mr. Ripley so I figured out that Anna = Dianna pretending to be Rose.

I also loved the story within a story and the multiple levels of stealing. Evan steals Rose and Dianna’s story, then Jake steals Evan’s story. Dianna steals Rose’s identity and then morphs into Anna. Also, we have multiple version of the same story: Evan’s partial manuscript of the Rose story, Crib is Jake’s interpretation of the story Evan told him, and then there’s the “truth” pieced together by Jake later on. At times I had to remind myself that Rose didn’t die when her mom pushed her into the bedpost; that was only Jake’s made-up version.

Good catch on Bonner – I bet there are a lot more Easter eggs in there that we haven’t noticed. Anyone see others?

There’s only one point in the book where she specifies the name of the town she supposedly grew up in, and that’s at the very end. (It’s Fingerbone, Idaho not Rawbone, Iowa.) At that point, she’s not claiming to have lived there but is taunting Jake for missing the references to a book that an MFA writing teacher should have been familiar with. (If there was another reference in the book that I missed, please accept my apologies.)

Another example of a non-innocent literary reference comes at the end when Jake starts to envision that a non-fiction true crimes work about Dianna Parker’s crimes could become an even bigger hit than Crib . “LOOK ON MY WORKS YOU MIGHTY AND DESPAIR! Nothing besides remains.” Korelitz’s quoting of Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias is a rebuke to Jake’s fantasies and a strong hint that things are not going to end well for him.

While some people might be surprised to find out Anna is Dianna/TalentedTom, I strongly suspect most readers will have figured it out. (Leaving out the Housekeeping clue, the biggest giveaway is that when he goes to Athens, GA to meet Arthur Pickens, “Rosa Parker”‘s lawyer, he finds out that the lawyer already knows who he is and is stonewalling. Obviously, TalentedTom has warned him in advance, but how could he know he was coming? The only person Jake told in advance was his wife, Anna.) But what I like to propose is this—Korelitz wants the reader to figure this out before Jake does because he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. Although he’s a likable and sympathetic character, Jake never can completely admit—even to himself—that what he did was wrong, and so he has to pay at the end.

There’s an Æsop fable that reminds me of Jake’s predicament in this book. A monkey finds a vase with a narrow neck filled with delicious nuts. The monkey reaches inside and grabs as many nuts as he can fit into his fist, but then finds he can’t get it out of the vase. He sees men coming with nets but he doesn’t want to give up the nuts, so he winds up getting captured. All Jake has to do is come clean even if it means seeing his new literary reputation take a nosedive, but it’s something he can’t give so he gets killed by Anna. But on the bright side, in death he becomes a literary martyr like F.Scott Fitzgerald or David Foster Wallace, and people will now read the books that publishers didn’t initially touch. But was it really worth the price?

I agree with you that the author wasn’t trying to hide it. I missed the Housekeeping clue but there are many others to find. There was also only one female character who could have been Dianna/Rose, and that was Anna. Also, just referencing The Talented Mr. Ripley suggests a stolen identity plot. I prefer books where clues are dropped along the way rather than those that keep everything murky and then try to explain everything in the last few chapters.

Also agree that what Jake did was morally gray but he could have come clean. If he had told Anna what was going on and tried to come clean that would have complicated things even more, as Anna didn’t want anyone to know what she did. It was only when he started poking into the story that she had to kill him. Or maybe she would have killed him anyway…

I’m pretty sure she would have killed him anyway. The first thing she says when she’s helping him to bed is “I wasn’t going to do this yet .” [emphasis mine] She was always planning to kill him—preferably as a widow so she could take full control of his literary estate, but if he didn’t fall head over heels for her? She would have stalked him until she could find a way to give him an unfortunate accident.

The irony is that assuming what (Di)anna told him at the end was true, his fears of TalentedTom destroying his literary career through his threats was groundless because Dianna had already destroyed all the evidence that could have proven that the plot for Jake’s Crib came directly from Evan Parker’s unpublished manuscript.

The Anna/ Dianne character is evil. What Jake did is nothing, to what Dianne/ Anna did. Like you said, Jake would have been killed by her anyway. Otherwise why did she go to such lengths to meet him and then marry him. She impresses Jake,his parents, his friends. The author describes her nature as a warm person! Cannot figure out such behavior. How us this possible ? What did Dianne want ?

Did not like the book as Dianne turns to be the winner

Hi Bhavani- so glad you joined our discussion!

Yes, Anna is evil but I think she would say that Jake stole her story and profited from it, and that was both unfair and unethical. (Okay, because she is a murderer, she can’t really take the moral high ground here lol). But I think she would say she is taking back what is rightfully hers. But it’s also unethical (and I think illegal) to profit from a crime, so someone needs to go after her and get that money. I don’t think there will be a part two, but that would be it.

I felt the intricate plot nicely set up the story. Not too slow for me. Loved the author references (I had to look up some of them) and names of crime conferences. I learned new names and events.

I didn’t find it slow either! It was a complicated plot so I liked that it unfolded at a more measured pace.

I was impressed by the analyses of Plot that the commentators provided. The point that the author might have deliberately made the identity of Jake’s tormentor implicit to demonstrate that he wasn’t quite as clever as he thought he was struck me as good.

The book possesses literary elements in its allusiveness to Highsmith and others. But the psychopathology of the tormentor and her successful history of crime seemed ridiculous to me, given her unflagging kindness and normalcy in her relationship with Jake. Not only would she be unable to get away with her misdeeds, but daily life with even the stupidest person would reveal elements of her true nature. And though the ending was inevitable, given the buildup, it struck me as ridiculous, too.

But Plot is basically genre fiction (thriller, horror), and there is no point in expecting more from it than the genre allows. I can understand why people like the book.

You don’t think Anna could have hidden her true nature as a way to fool Jake, marry him, kill him and get his money? She successfully impersonated her daughter. Like The Talented Mr. Ripley, she’s a sociopathic/psychopathic chameleon. I figured out she was either Rose or Dianna pretty quickly but only because there were no other female characters, not because I thought there was something “off” about her. If anything I thought she seemed too good to be true.

But the psychopathology of the tormentor and her successful history of crime seemed ridiculous to me, given her unflagging kindness and normalcy in her relationship with Jake. Not only would she be unable to get away with her misdeeds, but daily life with even the stupidest person would reveal elements of her true nature.

Exactly, how is the dichotomy possible. If the character is so evil, that kind of kindness,sweetness is impossible.

I did not find the plot too slow, but I realized who Anna was far earlier than I would have enjoyed. I thought the writing was good and the story was enjoyable though.

Same! I mean, there were not many options as to who she could be. I did really enjoy this one. I tried the book by the same author that the Undoing was based on, but didn’t love that. Maybe I’ll go back and read some Patricia Highsmith!

I also wondered whether I’m right in assuming the title is actually about the grave plot.

I think “plot” could definitely have a double meaning!

Yes! If you look closely at the book cover, you can see that you’re in a grave, looking up and out at the dirt, grass, and sky!

Ooh good catch I didn’t notice that!

As for me, I thought that when Jake received that letter from Talented Tom- why didn’t he look at the postmark? Also, when he received the first email, I knew it had to be from Anna because he had just been with her. Loved the last few pages!

Good point! And yes, I was side-eyeing Anna for a while. I thought the ending was pretty dark, but it fit.

For me personally the novel turned out to be a shallowy bummer. I figured out the blackmailer way too early, and I was badly missing all the details that usually make characters real, flesh-and-blood persons.

As for Ester Eggs, I think that by and large Anna’s story relates to the line of that nasty character from East of Eden (Cathy?).

I agree that there was not much suspense as to the identity of the blackmailer. I don’t think I’ve read E of E but I’m going to check that out!

I figured out that Anna was @TalentedTom immediately after they met. Like when he got the first text the day they met. Their romance in the book seemed “too good to be true” and like something out of a Hallmark movie.

I didn’t figure out the mother killing the daughter and how Anna was related to that until later.

I was wary of Anna and the way the spinach soup was discussed in so much detail both times, I thought she was going to poison him.

I didn’t like Jake or Anna. On the other hand, I don’t think taking the story idea from someone who was deceased was so bad but he should have told people the idea was described to him verbally by another.

Completely agree! She was definitely too good to be true. I also figured out the soup!

Yes. I totally agree. When there is way too much foreshadowing you know the author is making a point. Too obvious.

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The Plot: A Novel by Hanff Jean Korelitz

"Insanely readable." ?Stephen King

Hailed as "breathtakingly suspenseful," Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and ...

Introduction

Hailed as "breathtakingly suspenseful," Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.

Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written?let alone published?anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then . . . he hears the plot.

Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker’s first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that?a story that absolutely needs to be told.

In a few short years, all of Evan Parker’s predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.

As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his “sure thing” of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?

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Discussion questions, notes from the author to the bookclub, book club recommendations.

Recommended to book clubs by 1 of 1 members.

Member Reviews

Highly recommend. Enjoyed the New England/NY vibes

The Plot, Jean Hanff Korelitz, author; Kirby Heyborne, narrator When, Bonner, a down at heel writer, a one-novel success, cannot get a publisher to publish the additional novels he has aut ... (read more)

thought the twist was easily guessed

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BookBrowse Reviews The Plot by Jean Korelitz

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A jaded writer finds a second shot at success in this whirlwind thriller that probes the nature of creative provenance and asks the question: Whose stories are we allowed to tell?

Everyone has a unique voice and a story nobody else can tell. And anybody can be a writer.

It is a saying Jacob Finch Bonner has repeated countless times with his students to nudge their hidden muses along the path of literary exploration. If it did nothing for his own inspiration as a writer, he hopes he can at least help others find and tell their stories. Once the promising author of a novel the New York Times Book Review covered in its coveted "New & Noteworthy" section, Bonner's future as a great writer is on the wane. Arriving on campus at Ripley College in northern Vermont, his past literary promise is reflected by the old maxim that those who cannot do, teach. But when he meets student Evan Parker, he discovers that some plots do not fit into the neat constellation of story arcs known among the literati. Indeed, some shine so brightly they can blind a person to the dangers in telling them. So begins The Plot , Jean Hanff Korelitz's inimitable and imaginative story-within-a-story that sinks its claws in early and doesn't let go until its unforgettable finish. Korelitz, author of several novels including You Should Have Known (adapted by HBO into a miniseries called The Undoing ) explores the insular world of her own craft — writers and their ideas — via a chilling twist perhaps as clever as the one Evan Parker shares with Jacob Finch Bonner at an MFA program one fateful day. The Plot begins to unspool as Parker slumps his way into Bonner's office and arrogantly asserts his novel will be the next big thing, with a plot no one has ever seen before. When he finally discloses his "can't miss" idea, Bonner realizes the young man is correct: his story will be on every bestseller list and probably optioned for movie rights. How this indifferent young man, so unlike the other earnest and erstwhile students at the Ripley Symposia, created such an amazing plot is beyond Jake Bonner (who is struggling to finish his third novel). He bitterly expects to see the name "Evan Parker" in lights someday...but that someday never comes. Two-and-a-half years later and still working on the same unfinished novel, Bonner does an internet search for Parker to see what became of his "sure thing" plot. Instead, he finds his obituary. Parker died shortly after leaving the Ripley Symposia, and apparently, so did his story idea. Korelitz's tight pacing leaves no room to breathe as Bonner grabs at the still-untold story and achieves in a few short years the fame, wealth and literary renown he always desired. As the dizzying effects of his success continue to carry him to new heights, he receives an anonymous email one day that leaves him horrified and hollowed out: "You are a thief." The cat-and-mouse game begins as Bonner tries to come to grips with his unknown antagonist and unravel the mystery of Evan Parker and the ultimate origins of his singular story — before it all comes crashing down around him. A truly unique plot in its own right, the book is getting a lot of attention from the publishing industry, and indeed, it's a joy in part for its insider look at the writer's solitary craft juxtaposed against the hype and marketing of the publishing world. As story plunges into story (and plunges again the further Bonner investigates the genesis of Parker's idea), The Plot feels like a surreal exercise in life-imitating-art-imitating-life. It's a cerebral thriller sure to excite fans of Korelitz's other novels but also new readers curious about how writers get their ideas — and what price some might pay for them. After all, everyone has a unique voice and a story nobody else can tell. The Plot explores this quaint notion on a visceral and hyper-literal level to devastating effect.

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37 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 2, Chapters 5-7

Part 3, Chapters 8-14

Part 3, Chapters 15-24

Part 4, Chapter 25-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, published by Macmillan Publishers under the Celadon Books imprint in 2021, falls into the genres of thriller, crime, and mystery. Lauded by Stephen King, the novel was a New York Times Bestseller and appeared on lists such as Oprah Magazine’s 55 Most Anticipated Books of 2021 and The Washington Post’s 20 Books to Read This Summer.

Plot Summary

Jake Bonner teaches at Ripley College in Vermont. Jake attended a reputable MFA program, saw some success with his first novel, and less success with subsequent publications. An obnoxious student, Evan Parker, annoys Jake and another professor at a cookout and Jake’s workshop. Evan’s rudeness extends to other students.

Evan tells Jake an idea he has for a story based on the life of Evan’s sister Dianna; Jake categorizes it as compelling and original. After the term, Dianna kills her brother (making it look like a drug overdose) after finding his novel draft.

Ripley fires its faculty, and then rehires them for completely online, lower-paying positions. Jake seeks out additional online editing work. Two years later, he is making ends meet working at an upstate New York writer’s colony and living in a converted hotel. Jake feels disgraced because he has to organize lunches for successful writers. At this low point, he learns of Evan’s death, and decides to use Evan’s unpublished plot.

Three years later, Jake’s new novel Crib (based on Evan’s idea) is a wild success, with a huge book tour and movie deal. Jake meets the programming manager for a radio station in Seattle. Unbeknownst to Jake, the manager is actually Dianna, now going by the name Anna Williams, who arranged their meeting because she wants revenge for Jake stealing her life story. Jake’s attraction to her blinds him, and they go on a date before he leaves Seattle.

Jake gets a string of accusatory emails from someone called Talented Tom—actually Anna under a pseudonym . Jake ignores the messages and struggles to write his next book. Meanwhile, Anna moves in with Jake in New York City. Talented Tom goes public, and a Facebook post by Tom goes viral. Jake’s publisher brushes it off, saying all successful authors face online harassment. Talented Tom ignores a lawyer’s warning, continuing the barrage of online accusations of plagiarism.

Jake investigates Evan, initially assuming Talented Tom is another writer. Jake at first ignores the fact that Evan’s sister killed both her parents and brother. Anna is worried about Jake discovering her identity. Jake proposes, Anna accepts, and they are married at City Hall. She cooks for him all the time, foreshadowing how she will kill him: with drugged soup.

Jake visits Evan’s hometown in Vermont. There, he learns that Evan’s supposedly dead sister was universally disliked and that her daughter, Evan’s niece Rose Parker, left town. Jake tracks down the niece in Georgia. In Georgia, Jake learns that Rose supposedly lost her mother in a campground fire. Jake visits the campground, where Rose and Dianna posed as sisters. Jake realizes where Evan’s plot came from: A mother killing her daughter and taking her place.

When Jake returns to New York, Anna cooks him drugged soup. As he dies, Anna fills in all the missing details about how she killed her parents, Evan, and Rose. She then informs Jake that his death will look like a suicide provoked by the harassment of Talented Tom. Anna writes a suicide note for Jake, and skips town.

The epilogue is an interview with Anna. She claims to be distraught over Jake’s suicide and that he inspired her to become a writer herself.

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Quick Recap & Summary By Chapter

The Full Book Recap and Chapter-by-Chapter Summary for The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz are below.

Quick(-ish) Recap

The one-paragraph version: Jake writes a bestselling book based on a plot told to him by his MFA student, Evan Parker, who ends up dying soon after. When Jake starts getting anonymous messages calling him a "thief", he begins to investigate and learns that the story was true and based on Evan's family. In the story, a mother (Evan's sister) and daughter (Evan's niece) dislike each other. The mother ends up killing the daughter and taking her place. Jake figures out that the anonymous messages are likely from Evan's sister who murdered her own daughter (plus her parents and Evan). He goes home to tell his wife, but it turns out his wife is Evan's sister, who married him on purpose to take back her story. She murders Jake and inherits his books and estate.

In Part I , the book introduces Jacob "Jake" Finch Bonner , a once-promising writer who now teaches for a third-rate MFA program. As the school year begins, a new student, Evan Parker , comes into his class arrogantly and obnoxiously claiming that he has a work in progress with an amazing plot that's sure to become a great novel. Jake is skeptical when he reads an excerpt -- which describes a daughter and her mother living in an old house. But when Evan describes the plot, Jake realizes that this book will be everything Evan claims it will be.

Part II jumps forward two and a half years. Jake is now working three jobs after the MFA program he teaches at went online-only and reduced his salary. One day, Jake looks online to see what happened with Evan's book and learns that Evan died soon after their workshop class ended, meaning Evan likely never had time to complete his novel.

In Part III , Jake has now published Crib , a major bestseller soon to be adapted into a movie by Steven Spielberg, written based off of Evan's plot. He meets and marries a woman named Anna . However, Jake starts getting anonymous messages from someone going by "Talented Tom" calling him a "thief" and saying they know what Jake stole the novel. The situation escalates until his publisher's legal team has to get involved.

Meanwhile, excerpts from Crib are interspersed throughout the chapters, revealing more of its story. It jumps back in time to a young Samantha (the mother character) getting pregnant by her mother's boss at 15. She's forced by her religious parents to keep the baby. At 16, she has the child, Maria (the daughter character).

When the Talented Tom rumors start to gain traction in the media, Jake realizes it needs to be dealt with. He goes to the town in Vermont where Evan is from to research about his family. Jake learns that Evan's parents and sister are dead, but the sister ( Dianna ) had a child ( Rose ) who is alive. Jake believes Talented Tom is likely that surviving child.

As the excerpts from Crib continue, Maria grows up and Samantha's parents die of natural causes. Maria has to fend for herself for most of her childhood. She ends up smart and eager to leave town like her mother. However, their relationship is distant and full of mutual resentment. When Samantha learns from Maria's teacher that Maria is graduating early and attending college on scholarship, Samantha is upset that Maria didn't bother to tell her.

In Vermont, when Jake sees Evan's house, he realizes that Evan's story is not fictional at all, but rather the true story of his sister and niece. When Anna gets a letter from Tom about the accusations, Jake reluctantly tells her the truth about the situation.

Meanwhile in the story, the night Maria is about to leave, she finally tells Samantha about her departure only because she wants to borrow the car. Samantha is angry and the two get into an argument, with Maria bitterly deriding the notion that Samantha ever cared about her. Without thinking, Samantha grabs her, resulting in Maria's head slamming into a bedpost. Samantha then packs up Maria's things and buries her outside a remote cabin in another state.

In Part IV , Jake heads to Athens, Georgia where he'd heard Rose had last been. He confirms with the school registrar's office that she was a student at UGA for one year. The cleaning lady where Rose had lived says her mother had died in a fire on camping grounds nearby. A newspaper article confirms this, except it describes Dianna as her sister and says that Rose was 26.

In the final excerpts from Crib, Samantha goes to college in place of Maria. One day, Maria's former girlfriend shows up, but Samantha kills her, too.

In Athens, Jake pieces together that Dianna had driven Rose to college, where they stayed on a campgrounds. Dianna killed Rose in a fire and told the locals that the victim was her (Dianna). Dianna in turn claimed to be her 26-year-old sister (because she knew she couldn't pass for 16). From there, Dianna left to take Rose's place in college.

When Jake gets home, Anna gives him soup that turns out to be spiked with drugs. As Jake gets sleepy and groggy, Anna admits that she is Dianna (as well as Talented Tom). She killed her parents out of bitterness about them forcing her to keep the baby. Then, after she killed Rose in the fire (and told everyone else it was her own death), she took over Maria's life at UGA. One day Evan comes looking Rose and sees that Dianna is alive. Instead of doing anything about it, he realizes what has happened and he goes home and starts writing this story. Dianna follows him home and kills him, too.

After telling Jake this story, Anna leaves him for dead.

In the Epilogue , Jake is now deceased. Anna tells everyone it was a suicide as a result of being harassed over false accusations regarding the Talented Tom rumors. As his widow, Anna inherits his books and the proceeds from the story she feels he stole from her.

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Chapter-by-Chapter Summary

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Epilogue

Jacob “Jake” Finch Bonner is an author who previously wrote a novel, The Invention of Wonder , that made it onto the New York Times Book Review “New & Noteworthy” book list. Jake has always wanted to be a respected writer, though perhaps he’s was a bit more enthralled by the trappings of being a writer (the book signings, the fans, etc.) than the writing itself. By now, his literary star has dimmed. His second book, a collection of stories was quietly published by a university press. Most people believe he still hasn’t finished a next novel. Instead, the truth is he wrote two additional novels, but they received a pile of rejections.

He currently teaches at Ripley College where he’s a professor for the Master of Fine Arts Program in Fiction, Poetry, and Personal Non-Fiction (Memoir) program, which is housed in Richard Peng Hall . When he started teaching, he liked the idea of becoming a “great teacher”, but now he views his students bitterly, thinking them all less talented than they believe.

Today, Jake attends a faculty meeting followed by a welcome cookout to kick off the new school year. Alice Logan , a new professor of poetry, approaches him to complement his novel. She also mentions that they attended the same MFA program.

Jake thinks about how that MFA program was more prestigious than the one he currently teaches at. Before that, he had worked at a (sub-par) literary agency, reading stuff from the slush pile. He’d once managed to identify one book with real potential, but his bosses ignored it. Instead, it later got published by someone else and later optioned to be adapted into a movie starring Sandra Bullock. Jacob thinks about how he had “always known a good plot when he saw one”. He left that job to do his MFA and drafted The Invention of Wonder at that time.

As he chats with Alice, they are interrupted by a blond student who Jake notices has clearly already become an alpha-male among his peers.

The blond student turns out to be Evan Parker , who shows up in Jake’s 9-student seminar class (1-st year prose fiction workshop). In class, Evan says that he’s planning on writing as “Parker Evan”. He also obnoxiously announces that he has a work that’s making very good progress and that he’s sure it’s got a great plot (so good that even a lousy writer couldn’t mess it up). He insists that he doesn’t need anyone’s help, that he’s not sure good writing can be taught and that he’s mostly in the program to get a degree and possibly help him find an agent.

When Jake takes a look at Evan’s writing sample, Jake sees that Evan is actually a very good, natural writer. Still, Jake feels sure that based on this sample that the plot for Evan’s book couldn’t possible be as amazing as he had made it out to be. The sample describes a mother, Diandra , and a daughter, Ruby , in an old house that seem to loathe one another, without hinting at what the plot of the story is really about.

In the sample, Diandra is upstairs doing her work as a psychic (by the name of Sister Dee Dee ) on psychic hotline. Meanwhile, Ruby is is a determined 15-year-old student, who is in the 11th grade, having skipped kindergarten. They live in an old house that once belonged to Ruby’s grandparents. Ruby attends an “unambitious rural school”, so she also takes classes at the local community college. Ruby has been largely taking care of herself since she was young, and she is desperate to leave this place and go to college. In addition to school, Ruby works two part time jobs. Ruby contributes half of her pay to help around the house, but saves the rest.

After reading it for the third time, Jake meets with Evan to discuss. Evan is more interested in discussing how to get an agent than how to improve his writing. When Evan brags about how the book likely to be widely read and turned into a movie, Jake reminds him that those things aren’t the only indicators of success, and he gently reminds Evan that his book may not be all that he hopes.

Finally, Evan stops him by tells him the plot of his story, and Jake realizes that Evan was right and that everyone will read this book. Jake feels despondent knowing Evan’s story is so much better than the book that he’s working on.

Two and a half years later, Jake is now working at the Adlon Center for the Creative Arts in Sharon Springs, New York as a Program Coordinator. The Adlon Center is essentially a hotel that serves as a $1,000-dollar-a-week artists’ colony. Currently, there are six guests, all aspiring writers, staying there.

In 2013, Ripley College MFA program became online-only, and Jake had to continue with a severely reduced salary. He started doing additional freelance editing work. However, even with that income combined, he could no longer afford to live in New York. Instead, Jake got his current job, which he does in addition to the editing and work for Ripley.

Today, a guest from California is angry about the food an accommodations. As the man complains, Jake is reminded of Evan Parker. He thinks about how Evan’s book doesn’t appear to have been published yet, but he’s certain it will be immensely successful when it does happen. Comparatively, Jake then thinks about how he (himself) has now become a failed writer.

That night, Jake searches online for Evan Parker and any trace of him or his book. He wonders why it hasn’t been published yet. Finally, he comes across some information: an obituary. It states that Evan Parker had died unexpectedly a few months after the Ripley workshop class ended. Jake realizes that Evan likely never had a chance to finish his book.

Three years later, Jake’s second novel Crib has now sold over two million copies and spent nine months at the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller list. Instead of Evan’s Diandra and Ruby, Crib’s main characters are Samantha and Maria , but it’s the same story.

Today, he’s at the S. Mark Taper Foundation Auditorium of the Seattle Symphony for a book reading. He’s been traveling frequently to various events with Otis , the liason Macmillan (his publisher) sent with him, since the book came out. During the Q&A, someone asks him how he got the idea, and he wonders if somewhere out there someone knows the truth about where he’d stolen the plot from.

The next morning, Jake heads to the Sunrise Seattle studio for an interview on the morning radio with host Randy Johnson . The producer, an attractive 35-year-old woman named Anna Williams , greets him at the studio. During the interview, he and Randy briefly talk about the plot of the book, how Steven Spielberg is planning on directing the movie adaptation of Crib , etc. When it ends, Randy says that the interview was Anna’s idea. Afterwards, Anna asks Jake to coffee, and he says yes.

They end up at a chain coffee shop called Storyville , which overlooks the Public Market sign. Anna talks about how she grew up in Northern Idaho. As a child, she had a bad situation at home and ended up being informally adopted by one of her teachers, Miss Royce . Anna admits she’s a fan of his and that she was at the reading last night as well.

Afterwards, Jake checks his messages sees an alarming one, sent from someone at [email protected] via his website contact form earlier that morning. It reads: “You are a thief.”

Excerpt from pages 3-4 of Crib

At 15, Samantha (the equivalent of Diandra) finds out she’s pregnant (with the child later to become Maria/Ruby).

Samantha’s mother works as a housekeeper at the College Inn, nearby. Samantha’s father works on the maintenance staff at Hamilton College. Her father’s position guarantees Samantha admission and financial aid at the college, but now she realizes that the pregnancy means she will have no future.

As his events wrap up, Jake eventually returns to New York. Since meeting Anna, they’ve had nearly daily contact. But he soon receives another message from [email protected] that reads: “You are a thief. We both know it.” Jake doesn’t wonder what these messages are about. He knows that “Talented Tom” is a reference to the character Tom Ripley from Patricia Highsmith’s most famous novel and a thinly veiled reference to Ripley College where he’d met Evan Parker.

The next message he receives a while later reads: “I know you stole your ‘novel’ and I know who you stole it from.” Then, towards the end of October, he gets a fourth message: “What will Oprah say when she finds out about you? At least James Frey had the decency to steal from himself.”

Finally, a few days after that a fifth saying: “I’m on Twitter now. Thought you’d like to know. @TalentedTom”. Jake logs on to Twitter to see an account with no followers, no tweets and no profile picture that simply says “Writer” in the description. With Talented Tom preparing to ramp up his efforts, Jake realizes he needs to figure out who he’s dealing with.

First, Jake goes about trying to confirm that Evan Parker is, in fact, dead. Online there’s a memorial and the many messages from people seem to confirm that impression. One message is from someone named Martin Purcell who knew Evan from the MFA program. As Jake researches, he also discovers an unofficial alumni page for the Ripley MFA students and a message about a bar Evan owned called Parker Tavern in Rutland. According to the internet, it’s under new management following the owner’s death. It appears as though Evan overdosed from drugs.

Jake reaches out to Martin, asking to talk, and Martin calls him immediately, thrilled to be contacted by a famous author. Jake asks Martin about Evan under the guise of having just recently learned about Evan’s death. Martin doesn’t have much information, and he doesn’t know any of the particulars about the book Evan had been working on. Martin mentions that Evan’s parents and sister are dead and that he has a niece, but Jake already knew all that from the obituary.

Excerpt from pages 23-25 of Crib

Samantha refuses to tell her parents who the father of the baby is. In actuality, the baby’s father is Daniel Weybridge , who is Samantha’s mother’s boss and the proprietor of the College Inn. Daniel was married and three kids. Daniel had been after Samantha for at least a year, dropping flattering complements. When she finally followed him into one of the hotel rooms, he had lied to Samantha, claiming he’d had a vasectomy.

Jake’s agent, Matilda Salter , inquires over the phone about him submitting a draft of his next book. Matilda is a bit of a pushy agent, which is exactly why he wanted her in the first place to represent Crib . He reassures her that he’s working on the next book.

Afterwards, Anna texts Jake and suggests that she visit him in New York, and Jake eagerly agrees. Soon, they decide on her coming to stay for a week at the end of the month.

Anna arrives towards the end of November, and they barely leave the apartment for the next few days. The days after that, Anna starts to explore the city while he works during the day, meeting up with her in the late afternoon. They talk about Anna possibly moving to New York.

One night, over dinner, Jake asks Anna about her childhood. She describes how her mother had committed suicide by driving into a lake when she and her sister were young. Her mother’s sister then became responsible for the two of them, but she was someone who was barely able to care for herself, much less two young children. Anna’s sister had soon stopped going to school.

Anna’s teacher, Miss Royce, ended up offering to let Anna stay with her instead. Anna had asked her sister to come, too, but her sister refused. Then one day, Anna’s sister and aunt left town, and Anna has no idea where they went or what became of them. As for Anna, she ended up going to college at the University of Washington. Then, she spent almost a decade on on Whidbey Island working for a small radio station before eventually ending up in Seattle.

Excerpt from pages 36-38 of Crib

Samantha wants to get an abortion. However, her parents are Christians, and she knows that they will be against the idea. They also have veto power because Samantha is still a minor.

She also considers adoption, but her parents are against that too. They believe God meant for it to be this way, and that Samantha needs to live with the consequences of her decision.

Samantha ends up dropping out of school after being put on bed rest during month 4 due to high blood pressure. She spends the next five months in bed.

In mid-December, the user @TalentedTom starts tweeting, saying that “@JacobFinchBonner is a not the author of #Crib” and similar tweets.

Meanwhile, Anna goes back to Seattle for a while, but soon returns. Jake takes her to meet his family in Long Island over Hanukkah. Anna’s Seattle apartment has now been sublet, and in New York, she finds a new job as a producer on a Sirius show covering the tech industry.

Jake and Anna are happy, and Anna goes with him to book events when she can. They get a cat and name it Whidbey . They go to see Hamilton . Anna is more open to strangers than he is, and Jake finds that soon more people are welcomed into his life. They meet monthly with Jake’s parents, who quickly come to love Anna. Jake’s dad encourages him to propose.

However, all the while, @TalentedTom continues tweeting away his accusations. Jake worries about whether he’ll lose Anna if the truth ever comes out. Jake worries about if and when someone will finally ask him about @TalentedTom.

In February, @TalentedTom has now created a Facebook profile under the name Tom Talent . The first post reads: “Blindsided by that big twist in Crib? Here’s another one: Jacob Finch Bonner stole his novel from another writer.” It ends up being this post that finally catches people’s attention. Someone tweets asking if anyone knows what this rumor is about, and eventually Jake is called into a meeting with his editor Wendy , Matlida and the rest of the team.

Matilda mentions the accusations, though she’s dismissive of them. She says it’s normal for popular authors to have these accusations levied at them, though she still wants to pull in the legal department to ensure they’re all on the same page.

At the meeting, Matilda asks Jake point-blank whether there’s any truth or basis to the accusations. Jake flat-out says no. Matilda asks him about draft and notes, and Jake confirms he can produce them. The group also discusses how @TalentTom claims Jake stole the “story”, but their in-house attorney Alessandro F. Guarise confirms that you “can’t copyright a plot”. Still, Jake lies and assures them that he’d never come across this story before writing it himself.

Next, they discuss whether to ignore it or do something about it, like trying to get it taken down or trying to get him to stop by accusing him of defamation or something. They also discuss various avenues to file suit against the guy. Overall, Matilda reassures Jake that they’ll deal with it.

Excerpt from pages 43-44 of Crib

Samantha gives birth to Maria.

Alessandro soon issue a note, warning TalentedTom to cease and desist his postings, threatening to sue. For a few days things are quiet, but soon TalentedTom sends a message everyone — from Jake’s publisher, to his social media channels, to reporters, etc. — reciting the same message about Jake not being “rightful owner of the story he wrote”.

Jake is asked to comment by parties looking to follow up on the story. Still, within the publishing industry, Jake gets a lot of messages of support as well, reassuring him that it’ll all pass eventually.

Excerpt from pages 71-73 of Crib

Two years later, Samantha’s father has a medical episode and dies. While it makes the family less secure, Samantha is at least able to inherit his car to drive.

As time passes, Maria enters kindergarten and is a bit of a “surly child’, a picky eater who prefers looking at books to playing with the other kids. By now, Samantha’s former classmates have graduated. Samantha’s anger over her life fades into a kind of “low-grade disappointment”.

A few weeks later, Jake’s team at Macmillan meets again to discuss, generally agreeing there’s not much else to do be done and to hopefully let it pass. They encourage Jake to focus on getting his new novel done.

Amazingly, Jake is soon able to do just that. While it clearly did not have the potential to do as well as Crib, it was an acceptable follow-up, and Matilda and Wendy were happy with it.

By now, Anna has been living in New York for six months. They go out to dinner to celebrate, but Anna notes that something has been wrong with Jake and asks if she can help somehow. As she continues to pry, Jake tries to change the topic. Instead, he talks about how he appreciates her. As she talks, he realizes what’s really bothering her.

Finally, Jake proposes. She happily accepts, and soon they are both drunk and happy.

Jake and Anna soon get a ring and get married at City Hall, with a handful of friends and family in attendance. A week later, Matilda takes them out to celebrate, and she and Anna hit it off. When the topic of TalentedTom almost comes up, Jake manages to head it off. Anna changes her name to Anna Williams-Bonner, and they end up going on a short honeymoon to New Orleans.

Then, one night, Jake sees a letter addressed to him at their house that is from Talented Tom. He’s immediately panicked and opens it to find a warning saying: “You know what you did. I know what you did. Are you ready for everyone to know what you did? I hope so, because I’m getting ready to tell the world. Have fun with your career after that.”

With that, Jake knows something needs to be done, and he suspects the answer is connected to Ripley somehow. Jake finally reaches out to Martin, again, who had previously asked Jake to look over some of his work. Jake says he’s going to be in Vermont and offers to meet up in person to discuss, and Martin eagerly accepts.

Excerpt from page 98 of Crib

Around the time when Maria is ten, Samantha’s mother develops a lump in her breast which she ignores until it is too late. After two rounds of chemo, her mother decides not to continue. She passes away four months later.

Samantha moves into her parents’ room while Maria is moved into Samantha’s childhood bedroom. Maria becomes increasingly independent as she grows up, figuring out how to get herself fed and what’s needed around the house by the time she’s nine. When Maria is 11, the school offers to let her skip a grade, but Samantha declines.

Jake heads for Vermont and meets up with Martin Purcell at a the Birdseye Diner, near the inn Jake is staying at. As they talk, Jake brings up Evan, trying to get information. Martin re-iterates that Evan had never cared much for the community at MFA program and didn’t seem to share his work with others. Eventually, Martin mentions that Evan hated his diseased sister, though he doesn’t know why.

Next, Jake heads to the Parker Tavern. He ends up talking to a woman named Sally, who says the bar belongs to her brother-in-law. She mentions that she grew up with the previous over (Evan). She tells him that Evan was a few years older than her and had dated her sister, along with a bunch of other people in town. She adds that he just might be her nephew’s father.

Sally says that Evan knew everyone around here. When Jake brings up Evan writing a novel, Sally laughs, saying that Evan could never write a novel and that he probably never even read a book.

Soon, the bartender, Jerry Hastings , joins in on their conversation. Jerry talks about how Evan had been a drug addict. His parents had a huge house but died of a carbon monoxide leak when they were in high school. Evan’s sister had been a “piece of work”, but died a few years ago in a fire.

Before Jake leaves, Sally mentions that Evan’s sister had a kid that’s still alive, but the girl left home, location unknown, the minute she could.

Excerpt from pages 146-147 of Crib

Maria grows up to be much like her mother — smart, determined to leave and physically similar. However, Maria was a lesbian which seemed to ensure she wouldn’t end up like her mother. She’s also less willing to please others than her mother and seems to have a fairly detached attitude about friendships and people in general. At 13, Maria teaches herself to drive and drives herself to pick up her learner’s permit.

The next day, Jake goes looking for the Parker house based on what he’d been told, despite not having the exact address. When he finds it, he sees it’s a stunning, three-story house with a marble base.

Soon, a woman of the house, Betty , pulls up next to him. When Jake says he knew the former owner, Evan, Betty offers to let him take a look inside. Inside, Betty introduces him to her partner, Sylvia , who is star struck by Jake being a famous author. Upon request, Jake tells them about meeting Oprah and the forthcoming movie adaptation.

They tell him how the house was pretty run down before they got their hands on it. They also point out the bedroom where Evan died. As they gossip about the Parker family, they talk about how Evan had financial problems.

A week after his death, his niece put the house up for sale without cleaning any stuff out. When Betty and Sylvia moved in, they asked her to take the stuff away (via the attorney William Gaylord, Esquire ), but she never responded. Instead, they threw everything out.

As he walks around the house, he sees the pineapples design in one part the house, just like in Evan’s original story. With that, Jake understands that Evan’s story was about the people he knew. Evan had stolen his sister and niece’s story, and then it had been stolen again by Jake. The niece was likely understandably angry that this story had been taken from her and told to the public.

Excerpt from pages 178-180 of Crib

Maria starts dating a girl named Gab , and Samantha is accepting of their relationship. Samantha also recognizes that her daughter is continuing to drift away from her and will be gone soon.

When Maria is a junior, Samantha is asked to sign some papers to allow Maria to graduate early to attend Ohio State on scholarship. Samantha is surprised to learn all of this from Maria’s teacher instead of from Maria herself. She realizes that Maria will be gone even sooner than she’d realized, likely by August. A part of her had hoped that she and Maria would have changed course and become closer at some point, but Samantha now sees it’s not going to happen.

When summer rolls around, Maria has still not said anything about leaving, though Samantha notices that Maria seems to be packing up her stuff.

Thinking through what he’d learned, Jake heads to the Rutland Free Library to learn more about Evan Parker, his niece and his family.

The Parker family first arrived in the area in the 1850’s. Soon the family patriarch owned a marble quarry and built their family mansion, the one now owned by Betty and Sylvia. Evan’s parents were Nathaniel Parker and Jane Thatcher Parker . Evan’s sister was Dianna Parker and died three years before Evan. Her daughter’s name was Rose Parker .

Jake tries to find a photo of either woman online or in the yearbooks, but comes up empty. The only photo he finds is blurry one of Rose as a 10th grader in a team photo.

Next, Jake heads to Rose’s attorney William Gaylord’s offices in Rutland. At the office, Jake says he’s interested in real estate in the area. When the two men meet, William recognizes Jake’s name, saying his wife read his book. As they talk, Jake gently steers the conversation over to the topic of the Parker mansion, expressing regret that it had already been sold. William mentions that the seller was based in Georgia, attending college there.

Jake is driving when Anna calls about a letter she received from “Tom” with accusations about him. The letter says that Evan Parker is the real author of Crib, and Anna ended up going online to find out the extent of the rumors that had been circulating.

Anna is upset that he didn’t tell her about any of it. When Jake arrives at home, Anna demands to know the truth, and Jake tells her. He says that Evan was his student, who told him the plot of his book. Evan died, and Jake wrote his book based on that plot.

Jake also admits that he went to Vermont to track down information about Evan. He says that he thinks the story he thought was fictional appears to have been about Evan’s own sister and niece. As he talks, Anna’s anger fades, and she reminds him that she’s on his side.

Excerpt from pages 212-213 of Crib

After weeks of not speaking, Maria finally announces one night that she’s moving out for college and asks to borrow her mother’s car. She says she’ll return it after she drops off her stuff and then take the bus back. Samantha demands to know why Maria has never said anything about any of it. As the two begin to argue, Maria says that Samantha has never cared to be a good parent.

Finally, not thinking about what she’s doing, Samantha grabs Maria and flings her against the wall, with Maria’s head slamming again the bedpost with a loud crack. Samantha feels oddly calm, thinking about everything she’d given up for Maria and the lack of love she’d received in return.

Then, Samantha packs up Maria’s things, plus some of her own, and heads West. She finds a remote cabin and pays cash to rent it for a week. She buries her daughter outside, and then she leaves.

The next day, Jake tells Anna that he needs to go to Georgia, though she disapproves of him continuing to pursue this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Jack had identified someone named Rose Parker that was the right age and had lived in Athens, Georgia, a city that also housed a big university. He’d also managed to get the name of address of Rose’s attorney, also in Georgia.

When he lands in Atlanta, he finds out his new book has now gone into production. He soon heads for the UGA campus in Athens.

At the UGA registrar’s office, he’s able to confirm that Rose Parker had enrolled in Fall 2012 and had an off-campus address. However, she was no enrolled as of Fall 2013.

Next, Jake goes to see Rose’s lawyer in Georgia, Arthur Pickens , who immediately recognizes his name and tells him that he can’t tell him anything due to attorney-client privilege. Jake has thoroughly researched this attorney and threatens to expose things like Arthur’s DUI, a cheating incident involving Arthur’s college frat and a scandal involving a barely-legal teen, but the attorney insists that Jake leave.

Still, Jake tells Arthur to let Rose know that he’s learned some things about her and has questions about Evan’s untimely death that he’s willing to take to the police if she doesn’t stop harassing him.

After that, Jake goes to the address he found for Rose, an apartment complex called Athena Gardens . He brings up Rose Parker (claiming that she’s his cousin’s daughter), but the woman there doesn’t recognize her name. The cleaner, however, remembers Rose clearly. She says she was very mature for her age. Rose’s mother died in a fire when they were sleeping in a tent in Georgia on the way down from Vermont to Georgia. The cleaner mentions an age difference between her and the other students, but doesn’t specify to what extent.

Finally, Jake shows the cleaner the photo he has of Rose, but the cleaner insists it wasn’t her.

Excerpt from pages 245-246 of Crib

Samantha returned a few times over the next year, telling people how great Maria was doing at Ohio State. Meanwhile, Gab had been trying to contact Maria, but to no avail.

When Gab sees that Samantha is back, she asks about Maria, and Samantha says that Maria is seeing someone else now. Soon. Samantha sells the house and leaves.

When Jake talks to Anna next, he tells her he can’t come back yet, and she’s upset. However, he insists that there’s more to uncover here in Georgia. Afterwards, he tracks down a news story about Dianna’s death. It says that the fire occurred on the Foxfire Campground . It also names Dianna Parker, 32, as the victim, and it names Rose Parker as her 26-year-old sister.

Anna suggests that perhaps it’s just a mistake or typo that Rose was described as being 26 (instead of 16) or that it says she’s her sister. However, Jake thinks there’s more to it.

Jake makes his way to the Foxfire Campground and asks about the fire that had taken place there. The guy there, Mike , remembers it clearly and offers to drive him out to the spot. Mike explains that the two women had a propane heater with them, which is likely what started the fire. Mike notes that the campgrounds are fairly spread out and that there’s no cell reception out here to call for help.

Afterwards, Jake offers to buy dinner for Mike and Roy , the coroner, in order to talk. They meet at the Clayton Café. Roy explains that by the time by arrived, the tent had burned down and the body was completely charred. Jake asks whether a DNA test was done on the body, but Roy says there was someone there to make an identification and DNA tests aren’t done in those circumstances.

According to the woman who survived, she went out to go to the bathroom at night and she thinks she may have knocked over the heater on the way out. Roy tells him that the scene and his interactions were all consistent with what he would’ve expected based on the circumstances that were described. The people around there arranged for the body to be buried in the area.

Finally, as Roy asks about Jake’s interest in the case, Jake shows him the photo of Rose Parker, who Roy says he hasn’t seen before. Jake says that Rose Parker is the one who died. She was 16. Dianna wasn’t her sister, but her mother. Rose never made it to college, but rather is buried here.

When Jake tells them this, Roy laughs, recognizing that plot from Jake’s book. Roy thinks Jake read the book and convinced himself that’s what happened here. Dismissing Jake’s comments, Roy and Mike leave.

After Jake leaves the restaurant, he heads for the cemetery where the body is buried. He sees the plot marked as Dianna Parker, 1980-2012. He takes a photograph and sends it to his wife, noting that it’s actually Rose Parker’s grave.

Jake thinks about how his next book could be a meta-narrative about this experience, even if it means coming clean about having stolen th4 plot of his book from Evan Parker.

Excerpt from page 280 of Crib

Samantha ends up as a student at OSU, living off-campus. One day Gab shows up looking for Maria. Gab says that she has cut ties with everyone at home, packed stuff up and is heading out West. The last thing she wants to do is to get “closure” from Maria.

Samantha tells Gab that Maria is on campus, but offers to buy a pizza for the three of them for when Maria gets back. Then, later in the kitchen she crushes up peanuts to place under the pepperoni slices, knowing that Gab is allergic.

Back at home, Jake is happy to see Anna. He drinks her homemade soup while he tells her what he’s discovered. As he drinks the soup, he starts to feel sleepy and his mind feels groggy.

When Anna mentions that her mother had taught her how to make the soup, Jake is confused. He asks her how that’s possible if her mother died when she was so young. Anna finally starts laughing, pointing out that she stole her whole backstory from the plot of Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.

By now, Jake is struggling to think at all.

Anna gives him some pills. He doesn’t want to take them, but feels unable to resist. Then, she finally admits that she is Dianna, Evan’s sister. She bitterly recounts how Evan had been sleeping around with everyone and getting girls pregnant, but when it happened to her, her parents felt the need to punish her by forcing her to keep the baby.

After Evan leaves, Anna/Dianna kills her parents, by purposely putting dead batteries into the carbon monoxide alarm. After that, it was just her and the baby. Anna/Dianna thought they could be happy together, but the baby never showed her any affection. Finally, one day out of the blue, her daughter says she’s leaving. Anna/Dianna offers to take her, but then kills her, taking over her identity.

At some point Evan goes to Georgia, looking for Rose since he wants to sell the house (at this point Evan believes that his sister Dianna is dead and that Rose survived) due to his own financial troubles. But he comes back to see that Dianna is alive.

Instead of doing anything about it, he leaves and moves back into the house. Dianna then sees that he has signed up for a writing program. Dianna eventually returns home and sees that he’s written 200 pages of this story about her. She takes her stuff, finds his drugs, drugs Evan and Evan dies. She then sells the house and moves to Seattle until one day she hears about Evan’s book.

Anna’s plan then becomes to marry him, kill him and essentially get back her story, for legal purposes anyway (as his widow). She also imagines that his next book will do well, so she will have the proceeds for that as well.

After explaining all of this, Anna leaves Jake to die.

The epilogue picks up after Jake has died. Anna attends an event in his place. She talks about his “suicide” and how he’d been depressed after having to defend himself against baseless accusations of plagiarism.

Anna then tells the audience that she’s planning on staying in New York and that Macmillan is republishing Jake’s first two novels in his honor.

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Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written—let alone published—anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then . . . he hears the plot.

Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker’s first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that—a story that absolutely needs to be told.

In a few short years, all of Evan Parker’s predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.

As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his “sure thing” of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?

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The Book Series (Volume 1)

Author: Jean Hanff Korelitz

• Amazon.com Best Books of the Year
• New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
• Washington Post Best Books of the Year

CHAPTER ONE Anybody Can Be a Writer Jacob Finch Bonner, the once promising author of the “New & Noteworthy” (The New York Times Book Review ) novel The Invention of Wonder, let himself into the office he’d been assigned on the second floor of Richard Peng Hall, set his beat-up leather satchel on the barren desk, and looked around in something akin to despair. The office, his fourth home in Richard Peng Hall in as many years, was no great improvement on the earlier three, but at least it overlooked a vaguely collegiate walkway under trees from the window behind the desk, rather than the parking lot of years two and three or the dumpster of year one (when, ironically, he’d been much closer to the height of his literary fame, such as it was, and might conceivably have hoped for something nicer). The only thing in the room that signaled anything of an actual literary nature, that signaled anything of any warmth at all, was the beat-up satchel Jake used to transport his laptop and, on this particular day, the writing samples of his soon-to-arrive students, and this Jake had been carrying around for years. He’d acquired it at a flea market shortly before his first novel’s publication with a certain writerly self-consciousness: acclaimed young novelist still carries the old leather bag he used throughout his years of struggle! Any residual hope of becoming that person now was long gone. And even if it wasn’t there was no way to justify the expense of a new bag. Not any longer. Richard Peng Hall was a 1960s addition to the Ripley campus, an unlovely construction of white cinder block behind the gymnasium and beside some dormitories slapped together for “coeds” when Ripley College began admitting women in the year 1966 (which, to its credit, had been ahead of the curve). Richard Peng had been an engineering student from Hong Kong, and though he probably owed more of his eventual wealth to the school he’d attended after Ripley College (namely MIT), that institution had declined to construct a Richard Peng Hall, at least for the size of donation he’d had in mind. The Ripley building’s original purpose had been to accommodate the engineering program, and it still bore the distinct tang of a science building with its windowed lobby nobody ever sat in, its long, barren corridors, and that soul-killing cinder block. But when Ripley got rid of engineering in 2005 (got rid of all its science programs, actually, and all of its social science programs) and dedicated itself, in the words of its frantic board of supervisors, “to the study and practice of the arts and humanities in a world that increasingly undervalues and needs them,” Richard Peng Hall was reassigned to the low-residency Master of Fine Arts Program in Fiction, Poetry, and Personal Non-Fiction (Memoir). Thus had the writers come to Richard Peng Hall, on the campus of Ripley College, in this strange corner of northern Vermont, close enough to the fabled “Northeast Kingdom” to bear some trace of its distinct oddness (the area had been home to a small but hardy Christian cult since the 1970s) but not so far from Burlington and Hanover as to be completely in the back of beyond. Of course creative writing had been taught at the college since the 1950s, but never in any serious, let alone enterprising way. Things got added to the curriculum of every educational institution concerned with survival as the culture changed around it and as the students began, in their eternally student-y way, to make demands : women’s studies, African-American studies, a computer center that actually acknowledged computers were, you know, a thing . But when Ripley underwent its great crisis in the late 1980s, and when the college took a sober, and deeply trepidatious look at what might be required for actual institutional survival, it was—surprise!—the creative writing that signaled the most optimistic way forward. And so it had launched its first (and, still, only) graduate program, the Ripley Symposia in Creative Writing, and over the following years the Symposia basically ate up the rest of the college until all that was left was its low-residency program, so much more accommodating for students who couldn’t drop everything for a two-year MFA course. And shouldn’t be expected to! Writing, according to Ripley’s own glossy prospectus and highly enticing website, was not some elitist activity out of bounds to all but the fortunate few. Every single person had a unique voice and a story nobody else could tell. And anybody—especially with the guidance and support of the Ripley Symposia—could be a writer. All Jacob Finch Bonner had ever wanted to be was a writer. Ever, ever, ever, all the way back to suburban Long Island, which was the last place on earth a serious artist of any kind ought to come from but where he, nonetheless, had been cursed to grow up, the only child of a tax attorney and a high school guidance counselor. Why he’d affixed his star to the forlorn little shelf in his local library marked AUTHORS FROM LONG ISLAND! was anyone’s guess, but it did not pass unnoticed in the young writer’s home. His father (the tax attorney) had been forceful in his objections (Writers didn’t make money! Except Sidney Sheldon. Was Jake claiming he was the next Sidney Sheldon?) and his mother (the guidance counselor) had seen fit to remind him, constantly, of his mediocre-at-best PSAT score on the verbal side. (It was greatly embarrassing to Jake that he’d managed to do better on the math than the verbal. ) These had been grievous challenges to overcome, but what artist was without challenges to overcome? He’d read stubbornly (and, it should be noted, already competitively, and with envy) throughout his childhood, departing the mandatory curriculum, leapfrogging the usual adolescent dross to vet the emerging field of his future rivals. Then off he had gone to Wesleyan to study creative writing, falling in with a tight group of fellow proto-novelists and short story writers who were just as insanely competitive as he was. Many were the dreams of young Jacob Finch Bonner when it came to the fiction he would one day write. (The “Bonner,” in point of fact, wasn’t entirely authentic—Jake’s paternal great-grandfather had substituted Bonner for Bernstein a solid century before—but neither was the “Finch,” which Jake himself had added in high school as an homage to the novel that awakened his love of fiction.) Sometimes, with books he especially loved, he imagined that he had actually written them himself, and was giving interviews about them to critics or reviewers (always humble in his deflection of the interviewer’s praise) or reading from them to large, avid audiences in a bookstore or some hall full of occupied seats. He imagined his own photograph on the back jacket flap of a hardcover (taking as his templates the already outdated writer-leaning-over-manual-typewriter or writer-with-pipe) and thought far too often about sitting at a table, signing copies for a long, coiling line of readers. Thank you, he would intone graciously to each woman or man. That’s so kind of you to say. Yes, that’s one of my favorites, too. It wasn’t precisely true that Jake never thought about the actual writing of his future fictions. He understood that books did not write themselves, and that real work—work of imagination, work of tenacity, work of skill—would be required to bring his own eventual books into the world. He also understood that the field was not uncrowded: a lot of young people just like himself felt the way he did about books and wanted to write them one day, and it was even possible that some of these other young people might conceivably have even more natural talent than he did, or possibly a more robust imagination, or just a greater will to get the job done. These were not ideas that gave him much pleasure, but, in his favor, he did know his own mind. He knew that he would not be getting certified to teach English in public schools (“if the writing thing doesn’t work out”) or taking the LSATs (“why not?”). He knew that he had chosen his lane and begun swimming, and he would not stop swimming until he held his own book in his own hands, at which point the world would surely have learned the thing he himself had known for so many years: He was a writer. A great writer. That had been the intention, anyway. It was late June and it had been raining all over Vermont for the better part of a week when Jake opened the door to his new office in Richard Peng Hall. As he stepped inside he noticed that he had tracked mud along the corridor and into the room, and he looked down at his sorry running shoes—once white, now brown with damp and dirt, never in fact used for actual running—and felt the pointlessness of taking them off now. He’d spent the long day driving up from the city with two plastic Food Emporium bags of clothes and that elderly leather satchel containing the nearly as elderly laptop on which his current novel—the novel he was theoretically (as opposed to actually) working on—and the folders of submitted work by his assigned students, and it occurred to him that he had brought progressively less with him each time he’d made the trip north to Ripley. The first year? A big suitcase stuffed with most of his clothing (because who knew what might be considered appropriate attire for three weeks in northern Vermont, surrounded by surely fawning students and surely envious fellow teachers?) and every printed-out draft of his second novel, the deadline for which he’d had a tendency to whine about in public. This year? Only those two plastic bags of tossed-in jeans and shirts and the laptop he now mainly used for ordering dinner and watching YouTube. If he was still doing this depressing job a year from now, he probably wouldn’t even bother with the laptop. Copyright © 2021 by Jean Hanff Korelitz

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** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! ** The Tonight Show Summer Reads Winner ** A New York Times Notable Book of 2021 **

Book Details

** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! ** The Tonight Show Summer Reads Winner ** A New York Times Notable Book of 2021 ** "Insanely readable." —Stephen King Hailed as "breathtakingly suspenseful," Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it. Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written—let alone published—anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then . . . he hears the plot. Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker’s first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that—a story that absolutely needs to be told. In a few short years, all of Evan Parker’s predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief , it says. As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his “sure thing” of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?

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Celadon Books

9781250790767

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Selected as an Indie Next pick for May A most anticipated book (AARP, Business Insider, Bustle, CrimeReads, Entertainment Weekly, LitHub, the New York Times, Oprah Daily, Parade, PopSugar, Wall Street Journal Magazine, and more!) " The Plot is one of the best novels I’ve ever read about writers and writing. It’s also insanely readable and the suspense quotient is through the roof. It's remarkable." —Stephen King "My favorite book of 2021? This one is easy. 'The Plot' by Jean Hanff Korelitz...[G]ood Lord is this a fantastic book. In addition to being an absolutely perfectly told mystery story, it also happens to be an especially deft satire of the literary scene." —Malcolm Gladwell, "My Favorite Things of 2021" " The Plot is so well-crafted and compelling it’s nearly impossible to put down. Clever and chilling, this page-turner grabs you from the first chapter and doesn’t let you go until its startling, breath-taking conclusion." — Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, New York Times bestselling authors of The Wife Between Us "From its first pages, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot ensnares you in a rich tangle of literary vanities, treachery and fraud. Psychologically acute and breathtakingly suspenseful, you’ll find yourself rushing towards a finale both astonishing and utterly earned." —Megan Abbott, Bestselling author of Give Me Your Hand "The plot of ‘The Plot’ — the best thriller of the year (so far) — is too good to give away" — Washington Post " So clever, so taut, so dazzling, I read it in about five hours flat." —Lisa Jewell, AARP's "11 Top Authors Pick the Best Books of the Year" “Korelitz’s own plot is fiendishly clever, and here's the ultimate twist: that any novel about a writer’s life (lonely, anxious drudgery) could be this wildly suspenseful and entertaining.” — People , Book of the Week “As a longtime fan of Korelitz’s novels (including “You Should Have Known,” which was made into HBO’s “The Undoing”), I will say that I think The Plot is her gutsiest, most consequential book yet. It keeps you guessing and wondering, and also keeps you thinking: about ambition, fame and the nature of intellectual property (the analog kind).” — The New York Times Book Review “'The Plot' is wickedly funny and chillingly grim...it deserves to garner all the brass rings." — The Wall Street Journal "Gripping and thoroughly unsettling: This one will be flying off the shelves." — Kirkus Reviews “Deep character development, an impressively thick tapestry of intertwining story lines, and a candid glimpse into the publishing business make this a page-turner of the highest order. Korelitz deserves acclaim for her own perfect plot.” —Publishers Weekly (STARRED Review) "Readers may find themselves batting away sleep and setting an alarm for early the next day to continue Jean Hanff Korelitz’s propulsive literary thriller, The Plot. Korelitz is an audacious writer who delivers on her promises. Her next big-screen adaptation surely awaits." — Bookpage "Korelitz...effortlessly deconstructs the campus novel and, much like Michael Chabon in Wonder Boys (1995), acerbically mocks the publishing industry. Fearless Korelitz presents a wry and unusual joyride of a thriller full of gasp-inducing twists as it explores copyright, ownership, and the questionable morals of writers." — Booklist “Stay tuned to this devilishly compelling tale of ambition run amok.” —Oprah Daily “This staggeringly good literary thriller is about a staggeringly good literary thriller written by a failed novelist who has stolen the book's plot from a deceased student.” —Shelf Awareness "The author behind suspense novel You Should Have Known turned-HBO-series The Undoing outdoes herself in this literary-centric thrill ride." —Newsweek “Korelitz pulls off a true page-turner with, yes, a killer plot.” —AARP Magazine

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'The View' co-hosts share their favorite books of 2024

Learn more about the stories the ladies are loving this summer.

It's not too late to find your perfect beach book this summer!

All week, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Ana Navarro are sharing their summer selections in our annual "Ladies Get Lit" series! Read on for the "The View" co-hosts' favorite picks to "get lit" – from memoirs and contemporary fiction to historical romance and selections for young readers!

Five lucky viewers will win hard copies of the co-hosts' favorite summer books from our Ladies Get Lit series — all valued at just over $400! Enter for your chance to win by Monday, July 29, 2024 at midnight Eastern.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG'S PICKS

"Aretha Cool" by Matthew Jordan Smith See the last decade of Aretha Franklin's iconic life through the eyes of her trusted photographer Matthew Jordan Smith. The book features never-before-seen photographs that highlight Aretha's depth, soul and presence. This rare collection and tribute to her legacy celebrates the Queen of Soul's unparalleled artistry and her unique collaboration with Smith.

"The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America" by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer Journalists Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer reveal the inside story of the stunning reversal of Roe v. Wade. Their investigation charts the steadfast political and religious movement to take down abortion rights and remake American families, womanhood and the nation itself.

"The Friday Afternoon Club" by Griffin Dunne Actor, director and producer Griffin Dunne shares his story of growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan – including Sean Connery, Carrie Fisher and his aunt Joan Didion – all amid the tragedy of losing his sister, which changed his family forever.

SARA HAINES' PICKS

"The Women" by Kristin Hannah From the bestselling author of "Firefly Lane" and “The Nightingale,” "The Women" is a historical fiction novel about sheltered 20-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath, who joins the Army Nurse Corps after her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam. When she returns home, haunted by memories of tragedy, she is met by an America with a skeptical outlook on the war and the role women should play in sacrificing for their country.

"The Color of Love" by Poppy Harlow and Laura Jarrett "If love were a color, what would it be?" In this children's book for ages 3-7, news anchors Poppy Harlow and Laura Jarrett celebrate love in its many forms when a young girl tackles a classroom project to share what love looks like to her. With beautiful illustrations by Elisa Chavarri, young readers will get to explore how love manifests everywhere.

Tune into "The View" all week long to hear each of the co-hosts' picks!

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Book Reviews

'liars' is an autopsy of a bitterly disappointing marriage.

Heller McAlpin

"Elegies are the best love stories because they're the whole story," Sarah Manguso writes in her fierce second novel, Liars , an autopsy of a bitterly disappointing marriage, from first meeting to painful aftermath.

Of course, there are always at least two sides to every story, and especially every marriage. But this requiem for a failed relationship is from the point of view of a survivor, the wife left behind. Elegiac is not a word I would use to describe it.

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20 new books hitting shelves this summer that our critics can't wait to read.

The novel's narrator is a successful writer named Jane who bears more than a passing resemblance to the author we know from Manguso's three incisive memoirs. Jane discounts her husband's side of the story because she considers him such a liar. In this scathing account of their 14-year marriage, she cites many examples of his selfish behavior, distorted self-image, and the falsehoods he peddles about her mental instability. She repeatedly tries to reframe and succinctly encapsulate their increasingly unsatisfactory situation in order to process it. "I began to understand what a story is," she writes. "It's a manipulation. It's a way of containing unmanageable chaos."

Manguso's chilling first novel, Very Cold People , along with her celebrated memoirs, which include Ongoingness and 300 Arguments , feature short, sharply honed, double-spaced paragraphs that scrutinize aspects of life made more difficult by autoimmune disease, depression, and the aftermath of trauma.

NPR staffers pick their favorite fiction reads of 2024

Liars is similarly distilled, though it is her longest book yet. It's a tour de force, but it is also relentless. Like Leslie Jamison's Splinters , it is an old, oft-told tale about the challenges of not losing one's autonomy when hitching one's wagon to another person, and of combining marriage and motherhood with a successful writing career. Its pages are filled with rage and lined with red flags, which the narrator deliberately chooses not to heed until that strategy becomes untenable. I kept wanting to avert my eyes -- or shout warnings.

Here's how the novel starts:

In the beginning, I was only myself. Then I married a man, as women do. My life became archetypal, a drag show of nuclear familyhood. I got enmeshed in a story that had already been told ten billion times.

The couple meet at a film festival in upstate New York. Jane is attracted to John Bridges, a Canadian filmmaker, whose work she admires. Both are in their early 30s and live in New York City. She is drawn to his calm and his drive. "[H]e thought clearly, felt deeply, worked hard, made art, was dark and handsome, and wanted to marry me. I'd ordered à la carte and gotten everything I wanted," she writes.

But she soon discovers John's hidden flaws. He lied to her about his relationship status. His writing was barely literate, and he was terrible with money. He sulked and undermined her when her career advanced and his didn't.

She essentially takes over as his unpaid assistant, and her life is filled with "a thousand tasks," including teaching him how to open and sort mail into four piles -- shred, trash, file, action items.

"And yet," she writes, "no woman I knew was any better off, so I determined to carry on." She adds disturbingly, "After investing five years of my life, I didn't want to have to start over again."

Here are the nonfiction books NPR staffers have loved so far this year

So, reader -- no surprise, and no spoiler alert necessary -- she not only marries him, but has a child with him. Which of course eats into her writing time. Repeated moves between New York and California for her husband's work -- several failed startups which earn him a full-time salary with health insurance while they last -- undercut her ability to get a tenure-track teaching job, so she's stuck with low-paying adjunct positions, plus full responsibility for childcare and housekeeping. "I was in charge of everything and in control of nothing," she writes. "What could I do? I kept going for the child's sake."

Jane acknowledges that she's "a control freak, a neat freak, a crazy person,” and that her constant disappointment in John must have been hard on him. For her part, she finds her husband's disdain and lack of attention and respect soul-sapping.

Questions that haunt the narrator include: Why did she marry him? And why had she stayed with him so long? Is commitment a trap or a gift?

We can't help but wonder: If this "maestro of dishonesty" is so terrible, why is this woman so "annihilated" when he leaves her?

Well, for starters, because rejection never feels good. And he cheated on her. Plus, despite her many gripes, she'd loved his calm, and his body, and the idea of a long marriage in which the couple was a team. But perhaps most upsetting, the decision was taken out of her hands, heightening her sense of powerlessness.

Hoping to swear off future entrapment, Jane reminds herself that "A husband might be nothing but a bottomless pit of entitlement."

Bitterness is never attractive. But good writing is. Liars makes an old story fresh.

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‘Lady in the Lake’ Review: Not Just Another Baltimore Mystery

Natalie Portman stars in an elaborate adaptation of Laura Lippman’s novel about a pair of 1960s murders.

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By Mike Hale

If you’ve read Laura Lippman’s novel “Lady in the Lake,” about a pair of murders in Baltimore in the 1960s, you will know right away that the Apple TV+ mini-series based on it has taken liberties. The Thanksgiving parade that opens the action is not in the book; neither is the man dressed as a mailbox whom we see relieving himself in an alley before resuming his place in the procession.

It is a small moment characteristic of the writer and director Alma Har’el’s exhaustive reworking of Lippman’s twisty but fairly straightforward 2019 mystery. It is visually striking and nimbly staged: the powder blue and rusty red shades of the mailbox costume set against the dingy alley, the camera following the dancer in his bulky carapace as he awkwardly capers back to the parade. It’s diversely suggestive: of the distant period (mail!), of the bleak season, of a still strong civic self-regard. And it’s just there — cool and quirky, with no real weight, gone when the figure rounds the corner into the street.

The prodigiously talented Har’el has worked extensively in commercials and music videos and made several documentaries, including the evocative “Bombay Beach,” filmed at the Salton Sea. Before “Lady in the Lake,” her only major fictional work was the terrific feature “Honey Boy,” written by and starring her sometime collaborator Shia LaBeouf. Based on LaBeouf’s life, it explored the porous boundaries between fantasy and real life, between performance and ordinary behavior.

“Lady in the Lake,” which premiered with two of its seven episodes on Friday, has some similar ideas. But working as creator, director and primary writer, Har’el doesn’t manage to pull them together. The show is visually striking and full of sensuous atmosphere. But the ideas it is trying to put across about the wages of race, class and gender in a particular place and time don’t really translate from script to screen, and Har’el’s baroque elaborations on Lippman’s solid mystery plot start to feel increasingly artificial, in a tinselly, uninteresting way.

Lippman’s novel (the recipient of a rave review in The New York Times by Stephen King) tied together two fictional cases inspired by real events, the murders of a Jewish girl and a Black woman. Her main character is a Jewish housewife and frustrated writer in Baltimore, Maddie Schwartz (nee Morgenstern), who exploits the deaths to embark on a new career as a newspaper reporter; Maddie’s reinvention also involves leaving her husband and son and having an affair with a Black cop.

Har’el conflates some significant characters and adds and subtracts others while adhering, until the later episodes, to the major points of the plot. But she is less interested in that plot than in the themes of storytelling — who gets to tell the stories of Tessie, the Jewish girl, and Cleo, the Black woman — and broken dreams. Cleo’s dream of being a singer has gone unrealized, but Maddie’s dream of being a writer will be gained on the back of Cleo’s death.

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‘Hillbilly Elegy’ was almost universally praised. Times have changed.

When J.D. Vance burst onto the scene with his memoir in 2016, he was a different person. America was different, too.

The opening of “Hillbilly Elegy,” published in 2016, hits different now: “My name is J.D. Vance, and I think I should start with a confession: I find the existence of the book you hold in your hands somewhat absurd.” Then: “I am not a senator, a governor, or a former cabinet secretary.”

Six years later, Vance was elected senator, and this month, Donald Trump selected him as his 2024 running mate , prompting many to revisit the memoir that catapulted Vance into public life — including critics that heaped praise on the book when it was published.

In retrospect, many view the book as having been designed as a springboard into a political career. (“ J.D. Vance for President ?” asked Vogue in 2017.) Yet when Emily Esfahani Smith filed her review to her editor at the Wall Street Journal that summer, she didn’t think of the book as particularly political.

“I just thought it was a really compelling story,” she said. Only during the editing process did Smith add a quick reference to how the book had been published “during an election in which much has been promised to white working-class voters.” Her review happened to run around the same time that Rod Dreher’s interview with the author crashed the website of the American Conservative, and as the book took off, “I had to come to the conclusion that, wow, this book is touching on a nerve.”

During the election and its immediate aftermath, critics declared Vance’s personal account of his impoverished childhood in Ohio an urgent sociological text . The memoir was nearly ( nearly ) universally praised, becoming a staple of university reading programs and critics’ best-of lists. “Hillbilly Elegy” wasn’t just good; it was “essential.”

Vance was “a palatable messenger for information that people were sort of starting to figure out that they needed in that time. They needed to understand the Trump base, the Trump voter,” recalled Meghan Daum, who reviewed the memoir for the New York Times.

Within a couple of years — before Vance declared his intent to run for office in the 2022 elections, and even before Ron Howard’s film adaptation came out in 2020 — the public mood seemed to sour on the book.

“At a certain point, everyone just turned on it,” Daum said. “It’s hard to say why, though. People were mad at him because he was sort of doing the ‘up by the bootstraps’ thing. And showing any kind of understanding at all of people from those communities was suddenly so taboo.”

The criticism was bipartisan, Smith said. “I think on the right, it was more like, ‘Oh, wait, it’s just too simple and glib to say that J.D.’s book explains Trump. The Trump supporter isn’t just living in Appalachia.’”

As the Republican National Convention unfolded this week, some critics noted Vance’s shift away from the beliefs he’d espoused in the book.

Slate critic Laura Miller wrote Tuesday: “All the qualities that made Hillbilly Elegy one of the best books I read in 2016—its brutal honesty, its challenges to the self-delusional and self-defeating aspects of hillbilly culture, its mournful ambivalence about the identity he’s only partially left behind—have been shamelessly jettisoned by Vance for the sake of his political career.” She added: “Nowhere in the book does Vance express concerns about immigrants, documented or otherwise, or the perfidy of the deep state.”

“He’s a very good writer. I have to say he’s a lot better writer than he is a speaker,” said Financial Times columnist Edward Luce, speaking over the phone the morning after Vance’s acceptance speech.

“Probably one of the reasons why ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ hit a chord was because he did in that book the opposite of what he did last night,” Luce said. “In 2016, it was, ‘We are to blame for a lot of our own predicament.’ Last night, he was a victim, and they were all victims, of neoliberalism on Wall Street and the larger forces of capitalism and indifference to middle America. That was a complete U-turn from the moral of the story of ‘Hillbilly Elegy.’”

Their opinions of the author aside, do the critics think that “Hillbilly Elegy” still had something to say to America in 2024?

“It was an inspiring story. I learned a lot about a segment of America that I didn’t know very much about before I read the book. Those things totally still stand,” Smith said.

“It’s a good story. I think there’s a lot of people who don’t realize that this stuff goes on. Unfortunately, we’re in a moment that once you start talking about this demographic, people just shut down immediately,” Daum said, later adding: “I mean, this is not Tobias Wolff, okay? But there are a lot worse books.”

The vice-presidential nomination appears to have drawn in many new readers: “Hillbilly Elegy” surged to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list following Trump’s announcement Monday. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

But any who wish to wade into the literary debate may have to wait, at least on one platform: Goodreads temporarily blocked anyone from posting new ratings or reviews.

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