Mid-Book Review of "The Plot" by Jean Hanff Korelitz
I wrote a short Mastodon post about this, and I'm distracted from work because of a late start to my morning, so I thought I would expand on my thoughts in a slightly more coherent manner. I think there may be minor spoilers in here but since I'm only a third of the way through, I think what I reveal is probably on the back cover of the book.
The Plot is a 2021 novel by Jean Hannf Korelitz. I started reading it about 10 days ago when it became available from my library to borrow. The brief description (the back-of-the-book description is way too long to quote here):
Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot is a psychologically suspenseful novel about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.
To start: the novel is told from a limited third person POV of the protagonist - author Jacob Finch Bonner, who coasted off the mild success of his first book and begins the novel as a professor of a small MFA program. He's no longer "successful" and hasn't worked on a new book in many years. I would describe the narration of the early chapters as insufferable; the sentences are long and unwieldy, filled with extended parentheses that paint the main character as someone who feels above everyone despite his self-admitted lack of success as a writer.
I don't blame fLaMed for dropping out of the story early:
after 5 minutes, I cannot stand the narrator. Same day return
I almost dropped this onto the DNF shelf as well, but I wanted to give it a few chapters to see how it developed. If the narrator continued along this holier-than-thou track I was definitely going to stop reading. There's no sense in continuing to read something you don't like just because you feel compelled to finish every book you start.
Anyway, I'm glad I did stick through it a little bit. I'm about 36% through the book and found it interesting that as the book went along, the narrator gets a little less insufferable as he regains confidence in himself (and steals the plot of a book from one of his MFA students after discovering he died unexpectedly). Apparently this plot was so perfect and amazing that it was a guaranteed success.
This is also where I was holding my hand over that "DNF" button. This "plot" kept getting described as this amazing story but never went into specifics. I was concerned that Korelitz would never actually reveal any of the story, which to me would feel really cheap and a bit of a cheat. Thankfully that concern was waylaid as some of the details were revealed bit-by-bit, and even excerpts of this fake book are intertwined with the narrative.
Quick stop here: I don't find this so-called amazing plot to be all that interesting. That's the problem with building something up to be such an amazing story...it should actually be amazing. But I guess we just have to take the book's universe at face value and accept that everyone is gaga over this book. Enough that Steven Spielberg signed on to direct a film adaptation...
I did find it interesting that when an anonymous reader contacts Bonner to tell him he's a thief and knows where he got the story for his book from, the narration dips back into the "insufferable" territory. This is what made me make the connection between the narration style and the character's confidence. He's still not quite in first chapter mode but he's getting there.
One thing that isn't lining up is the pace of the book. The chapters are short and easy to breeze through, but the pace of the story is inconsistent. The early chapters of the book skip through years of the main character's life, and then once we get to his experiences of massive success everything slows right down during his tour stop in Seattle (and I have something to say about one development here in a bit). At this point the story starts to meander and introduce a love element to his life around the time that he is privately accused of being a thief and he starts investigating his dead former student.
My hope is that things pick back up, because right now it feels like a bit of stalling to stretch out the length of the book. Sort of like when you can feel that a TV show was contracted for 10 episodes when it should have been 6. I'll continue on with it, but by comparison I am enjoying Moon of the Turning Leaves a lot more, which has short chapters but a slow pace to the story, but it's building a lot of tension as it goes.
Oh, I mentioned the development in Seattle for the main character. He goes on a radio talk show to talk about his book with a pompous host who barely talks about the book. He meets a woman who I believe is introduced as the program director; I have to look that up again to confirm, but I am pretty sure this is correct. Anyway, a few chapters later the relationship between the talk show host and the PD character is that of the talk show host being her boss.
This isn't how radio stations work. The program director would be the host's boss, not the other way around. This is the kind of thing that takes me out of the story a little bit. Not enough for me to toss the book out the window, mind you, but it's the kind of detail that makes you wonder why the author even put that in. It's not important whether the host is the boss or the program director is the boss. Just say "your talk show host" instead of "your boss" or whatever. If you don't know enough about how radio stations are structured, leave it vague. I think that follows with most jobs.
I have to hold out until I finish reading before giving it an actual star rating or overall impression, but so far this feels like a 2.5-3 star book.
Edit, 3:18PM: I missed some words in the second paragraph, just added them in.
Reply by email
Or if you prefer, find me on Mastodon.