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?
"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
"Gripping and thoroughly unsettling: This one will be flying off the shelves."―Kirkus Reviews
Jean Hanff Korelitz
Jean Hanff Korelitz was born and raised in New York City and educated at Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge. She is the author of the novels: You Should Have Known (Adapted for HBO as “The Undoing” by David E. Kelley, directed by Susanne Bier and starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Donald Sutherland), Admission (adapted as the 2013 film of the same name, starring Tina Fey, Lily Tomlin and Paul Rudd), The Devil and Webster, The White Rose, The Sabbathday River and A Jury of Her Peers, as well as a middle-grade reader, Interference Powder, and a collection of poetry, The Properties of Breath. Two new novels, The Plot and The Latecomer, will be published by Celadon Books in 2021 and 2022.
With Paul Muldoon she adapted James Joyce’s “The Dead” as an immersive theatrical event, THE DEAD, 1904. The play was produced by Dot Dot Productions, LLC, for the Irish Repertory Theatre and performed at New York's American Irish Historical Society for seven week runs in 2016, 2017, and 2018.
Korelitz is the founder of BOOKTHEWRITER, a New York City based service that offers "Pop-Up Book Groups" where readers can discuss books with their authors. Events are being held online for the duration of the Coronavirus Pandemic.
She and her husband, Irish poet Paul Muldoon, are the parents of two children and live in New York City.
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