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A review by cabook
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
4.0
Free ARC from NetGalley. Honestly I skimmed the beginning chapters and didn’t think I was going to actually read this book.
Jacob Finch Bonner was once a successful author, but was now teaching writing at a low ranking college. One of his students, Evan Parker, is cocky and overly confident that he has a sure fire hit oof a novel in the works. Evan finally tells Jacob the plot and Jacob reluctantly agrees.
Three years later and Jacob realizes he never heard about this fantastic book that was sure to have movie producers clamoring. He looks it up on the internet and finds out that his student died right after his class was over. He never wrote this blockbuster book. So Jacob Finch Bonner decides to write it.
As predicted by Evan, it’s a mega hit. Jacob is thrilled and famous. He’s invited on to a radio talk show. The radio host is awful, but he likes the cute cute assistant, Anna. They start dating and marry shortly after.
Jacob begins getting random emails saying he’s going to o be exposed for stealing Evan’s plot. He digs around to find out more about Evan’s past.
BIG PROBLEM I had with this — it was just the plot. He wrote the actual book. I don’t think, even if he had been exposed, that that would ruin his career. To make this more believable, I think the author of this novel should have had him actually commit plagiarism — find and use some of Evan’s work or something.
SPOILER: Anna is Evan’s sister. She killed Evan because she didn’t want him telling her story. Then she “met” Jacob and married him in order to kill him and then get all the royalties from the novel and movie rights.
SPOILER. of the book within the book: the plot of Evan’s, and then Jacob’s, novel was about a woman who got pregnant in her teens, has the baby, resents the baby, and ends up killing her when she’s about to go off to college. The mother then takes the daughter’s place.
This was Evan’s family, not a story he made up. The mother was his sister. And of course his sister is Anna.
Jacob Finch Bonner was once a successful author, but was now teaching writing at a low ranking college. One of his students, Evan Parker, is cocky and overly confident that he has a sure fire hit oof a novel in the works. Evan finally tells Jacob the plot and Jacob reluctantly agrees.
Three years later and Jacob realizes he never heard about this fantastic book that was sure to have movie producers clamoring. He looks it up on the internet and finds out that his student died right after his class was over. He never wrote this blockbuster book. So Jacob Finch Bonner decides to write it.
As predicted by Evan, it’s a mega hit. Jacob is thrilled and famous. He’s invited on to a radio talk show. The radio host is awful, but he likes the cute cute assistant, Anna. They start dating and marry shortly after.
Jacob begins getting random emails saying he’s going to o be exposed for stealing Evan’s plot. He digs around to find out more about Evan’s past.
BIG PROBLEM I had with this — it was just the plot. He wrote the actual book. I don’t think, even if he had been exposed, that that would ruin his career. To make this more believable, I think the author of this novel should have had him actually commit plagiarism — find and use some of Evan’s work or something.
SPOILER: Anna is Evan’s sister. She killed Evan because she didn’t want him telling her story. Then she “met” Jacob and married him in order to kill him and then get all the royalties from the novel and movie rights.
SPOILER. of the book within the book: the plot of Evan’s, and then Jacob’s, novel was about a woman who got pregnant in her teens, has the baby, resents the baby, and ends up killing her when she’s about to go off to college. The mother then takes the daughter’s place.
This was Evan’s family, not a story he made up. The mother was his sister. And of course his sister is Anna.