Jean Hanff Korelitz’s 2021 novel The Plot was a take-down of the writing and publishing profession. In it, failed writer Jake Finch Bonner steals the plot outline of one of his writing students who has died and uses it to create his own best seller. Only someone knows that he stole the story and as he becomes more famous his life starts to spiral out of control. What better way to continue to send up the publishing industry than by writing a sequel to The Plot called… The Sequel in which the sins that drove the first novel continue to haunt the present. Given this is a sequel there may be spoilers in this review for The Plot.
The Sequel opens following Jake’s suicide. His wife, Anna Williams-Bonner has taken up publicity duty for his wildly successful book Crib and while doing so is encouraged to write a book of her own. So she does, basing it on her experiences in dealing with suicide. And Anna’s book The Afterword, too quickly becomes a best seller. But Anna knows all too well the secrets that sit beneath Jake’s success and when she starts getting pages of the original manuscript that Jake used, she realises that she needs to take action.
It is no surprise that the small college that Jake taught writing at is called Ripley College. Because Anna, much more so than Jake, is very much a character in the vein on Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. In that Anna has never balks at doing whatever it takes to retain what she thinks is rightfully hers. She is a great character – self-aware, ruthless in some ways pretty despicable but also with a justified grudge against the world.
As with The Plot, the thriller element is not really the draw here. Korelitz has a lot more fun once again skewering the publishing industry. From book tours, to signing queues, to vanity projects, to sequels themselves (every chapter of the book if named using the name of a sequel – some of which readers will recognise but just in case there is a full list at the end). That said, in many ways, The Sequel works better than The Plot, in its character arc. This is probably because while Jake had a conscience and was driven partly by guilt, Anna has no such regulator so is more fun (in a dark way) to spend to time with.
The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz
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