Review: The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz - Full Spoilers!
In case you've forgotten the synposis of the novel from my last post (or maybe you didn't read it), it goes like this (taken from The Bibliofile:
In The Plot, Jake Bonner is a failed writer who teaches at a third-rate MFA program. One day, one of his students, Evan, tells him about a book he's working on with a great plot. Later, Jake learns that Evan died without writing his book.
Years later, Jake ends up becoming a bestselling author based on the plot of that book. However, he starts receiving anonymous messages from someone who knows he [stole] his book's plot.
In this thriller and book-within-a-book, Jake must uncover the truth behind the plot of his own book.
I really can't remember where I first read about this book. I obviously came across it in passing somewhere, and the quick blurb/synopsis grabbed me as a neat book I could borrow from the library. I delayed the hold a few times because I was busy reading other things and didn't want to feel the pressure of reading for a deadline (i.e. the due date), but the library came calling at the beginning of July and I decided to dive in. I won't bury the leded - this was a middling read for me and I rated it 3 stars. In other words, I thought it was OK, and kept me interested enough to finish reading it, but I would never buy it for myself or necessarily recommend it to someone else (unless they were looking for a breezy read that isn't really dark and heavy).
Cast of Characters
Protagonist: Jacob "Finch" Bonner, author
Antagonist: TalentedTomb (pseudonym)
Peripheral Characters:
- Anna Williams (Seattle radio producer, Jacob's girlfriend-turned-wife)
- Evan Parker (MFA Student)
- Dianna Parker (Evan's sister)
- Rose Parker (Dianna's daughter)
- Martin Purcell (another student in Jacob's MFA program)
- Other minor characters - Jacob's editor, publisher, etc.
Structure
The Plot is organized into four parts, with early chapters establishing Jake Bonner as a failed writer working in a job that he hates, teaching students things that he doesn't really believe himself. These chapters jump forward in time many years, until we catch up in the "present" after he discovers the death of one of his students and writes a best-selling novel.
As the story progresses, exerpts from his novel, "Crib", are included at the end of chapters that eventually mirror plot developments in the story proper. The novel concludes with an epilogue that ties up the book nicely, though I discovered that there is a sequel coming (called, appropriately, The Sequel) this year, and the ending actually works well for setting up the next book.
The "Plot"
I feel it's important to cover the details of the plot that was "stolen" by the main character, Jacob Bonner. After all, the entire story revolves around it. In the early chapters of the novel, the student who relays the plot to Bonner describes it as this amazing story that will be a best-seller and attract an A-List director in Hollywood to adapt into a movie. Oprah will endorse it for her book club. Accolades galore. I get the idea - there has to be a compelling reason for Bonner to want to write the story for himself when he discovers his student (Evan Parker) died without publishing the novel.
The problem is that this sets up heavy expectations for Korelitz to fulfill. This is supposed to be this amazing story! The worst thing that Korelitz could have done is constantly refer to how good this novel was and never include any exerpts from it. At first I thought this was going to be the case, as she writes around every description of it. As soon as Evan Parker begins to describe the plot to Bonner, the chapter ends and we never read about it. I was very annoyed about this development, but was relieved to see that eventually exerpts from Bonner's novel ("Crib", which is sort of a play on "to crib" something, or "steal") as a book-within-a-book structure.
To be frank, the story of the in-universe book is not all that stellar or groundbreaking. I believe that it would be a very popular airport book and I could see it being adapted in Hollywood, but directed by Steven Spielberg? Spending 18 months+ on bestseller lists? I don't know that it's all that great. Nevertheless, I did find it easy to suspend disbelief and go along with the novel and assume that yes, in this story, it's a massively popular book.
The Writing
The prose almost made me stop reading the book. I mentioned in my mid-book review that it basically made fLaMed metaphorically throw the book out the window - and I don't blame him. The third person narration - limited to Bonner's point of view - is exessively long at the start of the book and filled with parentheticals that show how self-loathing he is and how much he considers himself a failure. I wanted to push through a little more to see if I could get past the narrator; I did, and the narration does get less wordy as the story follows along. I don't know if Korelitz did this consciously but I thought that as Bonner enjoys a little more success there are fewer parenthetical paragraphs.
There's also less self-doubt, although it still hangs in there, ready to come back to the forefront when he gets a message from "TalentedTom" - who accuses him of stealing the story and knowing who he stole it from. This was definitely purposeful and despite the fact that many people in his professional circle (his editor and publisher) tell him that this kind of thing is normal and not to worry about it, he does actually start to get worried about his success vanishing at the drop of a hat if this were to become public. That's beside the point about the writing though, so I'll leave it there for now.
The book-within-a-book - "Crib" - was written in a very different voice though. At times it was short and punchy to emphasize certain things, and at others it was long and meandering. It was written well to evoke a specific feeling and I thought it was effective. I still wasn't blown away by this supposed-amazing book, but I could see that Korelitz is capable of good writing and how she wrote Bonner's limited POV was a specific choice.
The Story
The driving force of the story is the mysterious "TalentedTom" who contacts him anonymously to threaten him with revealing the source of his story. I found this point hard to suspend my disbelief, a little bit. After all - his editor and publisher and his publishing house's lawyer explain that it's quite common for people to come out of the woodwork and claim that an author stole their story. Bonner's initial reaction to these threats is to ignore them and hope they go away, but they eventually become public and that's when the publishing house comes into the picture. From their perspective, most people would ignore these claims and Bonner would be fine. His paperback copy would come out, his next book would be published, and no one would care about TalentedTom.
But this book is marketed as a thriller, and it feels a little forced that Bonner is so caught up with these anonymous messages. What's problematic for me is that the middle of the book slows way down and he keeps ignoring all of these messages. The prose tells us that he's worried but it doesn't feel urgent. At no point did I feel like there was a specific threat to Bonner or his new wife (Anna, who moves across the country to live with him in New York and eventually marries him). Shouldn't I feel some sort of tension as I read through the book? By comparison, as I read Moon of the Turning Leaves, there is heavy tension throughout the book as you're waiting for the shoe to drop, so to speak. I didn't feel that in this novel.
Eventually, Bonner starts a search for the identity of "TalentedTom". He visits a former student, rules him out, but finds trails to lead him onward. So this is more of a mystery than a thriller to me. That's what kept me going, because I wanted to find out who was harassing him, but again - no tension felt. Where the novel became problematic was when it's revealed through the "Crib" exerpts that that novel's mother kills her daughter; but Bonner still hasn't figured out that this is what happened in real life (at this point he's determined that the plot of his novel seems to be related to real life events in Evan Parker's life). So we, the audience, are ahead of Bonner. This is a problem.
I had an inkling that Anna would turn out to be the antagonist in the story, but it wasn't really confirmed for me until late in the book. There are moments where she's talking to Bonner as he's working through his findings with her - at one point it seems like she slips when she says that TalentedTom wants him to "come clean". But the most obvious clue is when physical letters are sent to their home address - how else would this guy know where they lived? Even then, Bonner doesn't seem to be all that freaked out about this development. I mean, the narration says he is but he kind of moves past it until Anna suddenly receives a letter.
Ultimately the part that did work for me (and bumped this up from maybe 2.5 to 3 stars) was in the "reveal" chapter, when Anna tells Jacob all about her plan to take back her story, and confesses her crimes (turns out she planned to murder her daughter and take her place, it wasn't an accident). It was a little on the nose and suffered a bit from mystery/thriller tropes where she very suddenly turns evil and attempts to kill him, but where it worked is that she actually does kill him and make it look like a suicide. She gets away with it! And in that sense she reclaims her story and writes a book of her own. I thought that was well done, and happy that Bonner didn't miraculously survive Anna's plot and get her arrested or something.
As I said earlier, the epilogue wraps up the story quite nicely, but with one of the exerpts from the next novel, The Sequel, it also works as a setup for the next story. I won't say anything about that because A) it's not out yet, and B) I feel like it would be good to go into that novel blind. I might read it...we'll see.
Nitpicks
I don't have very many nitpicks, but the biggest is the inconsistency of Anna's profession. I said this in the last post about the book - she's described as having the job of "Program Director" at a radio station. But in subsequent chapters she says that her boss was the radio host at the station she worked at. But the program director would be the host's boss! And I would believe that she's a program director, since she's in her mid-to-late 30s (so she tells Jake, anyway). But what's described of her job sounds like she's the producer of the talk show.
And then at the end of the novel - when she's revealing her whole plan - she says she had a producer job! So clearly Korelitz' editors didn't notice the discrepancy (and probably didn't know the role of a program director) and get her to revise the earlier chapters. I bet this wouldn't bug most people but as I work in radio, this was a noticeable mistake and made even worse when the job description didn't line up between chapters. I suppose it's possible Anna misrepresented herself as a program director to get Bonner to agree to the interview, but he refers to the radio host as her boss...so I think the more likely answer is that Korelitz was mistaken in what the role of a PD really is.
Beyond that, my other nitpicks are related to how the main character misses a lot of things that should be obvious, but I think that can be explained by how self-absorbed he is. I'm thinking of things like TalentedTom sending letters to his home address and not trying to figure out how he might have found his address, or being more worried about his reputation being ruined and not that he might come to physical harm.
I guess the other nitpick is Bonner's novel / plot being so hugely popular. It really does feel more like a book that would blow up for a few months and then fizzle out for the next big thing, rather than continue with all of this momentum for more than a year. I recently watched American Fiction, and the popularity of "Crib" kind of mirrors the "success" that Thelonious Ellison's satiric book reaches, but in that movie (and book, it's based on a book) this success is met with incredulity at how well it's doing. Yes, different type of story, but The Plot asks to take the popularity of this book at face value. I went along with it, because otherwise I'd be taken completely out of the story.
Overall
I think I gave my overall thoughts at the beginning of the review, but this is a solid 3-star book for me. The mystery at the core of the book is engaging enough that I wanted to follow it, but the beginning was annoying, the middle was slow. The pacing felt about right after Bonner started actually doing something about his situation but before that, it was either too fast (time jumps) or too slow (like I said, the middle).
I'm not going to recommend this to anyone if they ask me "hey what's a good book to read?" But if someone were to ask me about this book specifically, I might say it's worth reading, but not to take too seriously.
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