Writing in the Washington Post (May 16, 2021), Maureen Corrigan says The Plot is “the best thriller of the year (so far).” And according to the book jacket, Stephen King calls it “insanely readable.” I wonder why. True, the novel is unusually well written. The plot is clever, the story well-paced and suspenseful. It’s a plot within a plot, and that’s a little different from the usual. Jean Hanff Korelitz is a pro. No doubt about it. But “the best thriller of the year (so far)” with a plot that’s “too good to give away?” Not so much.
I saw the twist coming a mile off. Well, about halfway through the book, to put it more accurately. And up to that point, I kept wondering what all the fuss was about. After all, The Plot is a story about a plot within a plot. Yes, it’s a story about a writer. And how many writers have written books about writers? Do we need another one?
A story that’s up for grabs
Here’s the problem. The mystery in The Plot revolves around a clever murder story that an author desperate for a bestseller bases on a tale told to him by someone else. The author, Jacob Finch Bonner (“Jake”), is teaching a creative writing class, and the tale comes from one of his students in a consulting session. Then, months later, the student—a tavern owner in a small town not far away—dies of a drug overdose without ever writing his novel. And years after that, Jake figures the story is up for grabs. He writes what proves to be a runaway #1 New York Times bestseller.
Is this plagiarism?
Then someone starts trolling Jake on Twitter and Facebook, accusing him of plagiarism. The troll even writes to Jake’s publisher demanding they take the book out of print and confess the crime. But what’s the crime? Of course, it’s frowned upon to take another’s ideas and represent them at his own. And if you copy someone else’s writing—the words—that can be a crime. But, despite all the nonsense that’s floating around these days about “appropriation,” I don’t see the problem here. Jake read only a few pages of the student’s novel, and he changed all the details in what he remembered. Anyway, you can’t copyright a plot any more than you can copyright a title. He wrote every single word of his book. Every one was original.
So, does Jake just laugh it off, as he should have done, and explain to everyone who asks how the story came to him? After all, people always ask writers, “Where do you get your ideas?” All he had to do was tell interviewers the crazy story about how the idea came to him. But no. He freaks out. And then things start going from bad to worse as the troll keeps coming, again and again. And the plot within a plot unwinds to a grim conclusion that should be a big surprise.
About the author
Jean Hanff Korelitz is the author of eight novels and three other books as well as a portfolio of work for film, television, and the theater. She holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge. Korelitz was born in New York City in 1961 and raised there. She is married to Irish poet Paul Muldoon, with whom she has two children. They live in New York City.
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A transcendent novel of love, loss, and self-discovery by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Where the Forest Meets the Stars. | Learn more
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Popular Highlights in this book
You’re only as successful as the last book you published, and you’re only as good as the next book you’re writing. So shut up and write.Highlighted by 1,025 Kindle readers- Midway upon the journey of our life, he heard himself think, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.Highlighted by 1,022 Kindle readers
- Good writers borrow, great writers steal, Jake was thinking. That ubiquitous phrase was attributed to T. S. Eliot (which didn’t mean Eliot hadn’t, himself, stolen it!), but Eliot had been talking, perhaps less than seriously, about the theft of actual language—phrases and sentences and paragraphs—not of a story, itself.Highlighted by 639 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
At the risk of sounding too meta, how did you come up with the plot of The Plot?
JEAN HANFF KORELITZ: Like most writers I’m fascinated by plagiarism and the murkiness around creative appropriation: chefs stealing recipes from other chefs, comedians helping themselves to other comedians’ jokes, academic theft, and above all creative writers appropriating work by others. I’m hardly the first novelist to write about this — there’s an entire sub-genre of Stephen King work on this theme — and it’s not the first time I’ve touched on it in my own work, but it’s the first time I’ve placed it front and center in a book. I think it makes sense to write about the things that fascinate us.
While writing this book, you must have put yourself in the shoes of the main character. Do you think you’d ever steal a genius idea for a book if you knew it would never be used?
I wouldn’t, but only because I’m squeamish by nature and I’d be terrified about that degree of exposure and disapproval. But like most artists, I also understand that stories run underneath the ground of our collective experience, and we all dip into them, whether we’re aware of it or not. The real question is: At what point does a collective story become the individual property of a person or an artist? A contender for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama was The Inheritance by Matthew Lopez, which openly adapts Forster’s Howards End to contemporary New York City. This is a normal, even laudatory practice, which artists fully understand. But to help yourself to the specific plot of a recently deceased author who never completed his book? I don’t know where the line is, exactly, but I’m pretty sure that’s over it.
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I've heard so many wonderful things about this book, it was all over social media and when I say all over I mean EVERYWHERE I looked, so naturally it ended up in my @amazon basket to see what all the fuss was about.I must say, I loved the concept! A book where the plot of the book revolves around the plot of a book. That's definitely a novel idea (see what I did there? 😏).Although the book had a bit of a slow start and took a little getting in to (I was expecting the slow burn and this was in a lot of the reviews for the book). Once it picked up, it was difficult to put down, it sucked you right in (hence finishing it at 4.30am when I did with red eyes and a stiff neck).The main character, although I did not love him, he was extremely relatable and would be to most people. He represented real fears and anxieties than any one of us could face, his downward spiral is one that many could understand. The inner struggles and demons he grappled with and the decisions he made because of them also felt real and reasonable. His own lack of belief in himself and self doubt playing such a large role in his life.I loved the plot twist, even though I must admit, I did see coming, to quote one of the characters in the book "cause I'm that person who leans over in the movie and tells you, five minutes in, what's gonna happen, it's like a curse".Despite that, I really loved the story, the style that it was told, its concept and I absolutely loved the ending!I could definitely see what all the fuss was about!
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Top reviews from other countries
Em
Predictable and disappointing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 17, 2021Kat Z
Meh. Good thing it was only 99p
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 29, 2021Mr. Sj Dilley
Enjoyable literary thriller
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 25, 2021D. W. T. Taylor
Motivation shmotivation
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 12, 2021
