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From an acclaimed senior editor at Vanity Fair comes an intoxicating debut novel about a young journalist who discovers a short story that's inexplicably about her life—leading to an entanglement with the author's widow, daughter, and former best friend.
Sal Cannon's life is in shambles. Her relationship is crumbling, and her career in journalism hits a low point after it's revealed that her profile of a playwright is full of inaccuracies. She's close to rock-bottom when she reads a short story by Martin Keller: a much older author she met at a literary event years ago. Much to her shock, the story is about her and the moment they met. When Sal learns the story is excerpted from his unpublished novel, she reaches out to the story's editor—only to learn that Martin is deceased. Desperate to leave her crumbling life behind and to read the manuscript from which the story was excerpted, Sal decides to find Martin's widow, Moira.
Moira has made it clear that she doesn't want to be contacted. But soon Sal is on a bus to Upstate New York, where she slowly but surely inserts herself into Moira's life. Or is it the other way around? As Sal sifts through Martin's papers and learns more about Moira, the question of muse and artist arises—again and again. Even more so when Martin's daughter's story emerges. Who owns a story? And who is the one left to tell it?
The Mythmakers is a nesting doll of a book that grapples with perspective and memory, as well as the battles between creative ambition and love. It's a story about the trials and tribulations of finding out who you are, at any stage in your life, and how inspiration might find you in the strangest of places.
"A thoughtful [debut] about what it means to make, and remake, a self." —Kirkus Reviews
"[E]ngrossing...Weir has a journalist's eye for mood and setting, whether in her perceptive account of Sal's trials or her astute portrayal of Martin's turbulent early years as a novelist. It's a rather auspicious debut." —Publisher's Weekly
"Keziah Weir's debut novel takes an age-old literary question—is this fiction actually based off reality?—and twists it into a compelling story about art, perspective, and the line between inspiration and transgression." —Harper's Bazaar
"A meditation on art and memory, a twisty literary mystery, and the story of a young woman's emergence into her true self, The Mythmakers is full of surprise and delight." —Dani Shapiro, New York Times Bestselling author of Inheritance and Signal Fires
"A novel about ambition—art-making, self-making—and the ways in which, when questions of gender and desire and love enter the scene, lies and truths can tangle as intricately as the links of a fine necklace. The Mythmakers glitters with suspense, and it held me rapt. Keziah Weir has arrived." —Clare Beams, author of The Illness Lesson
"Every once in a while, a novel appears that grips you and confides in you as an old friend would. Keziah Weir's The Mythmakers is not only a love letter to the mysteries that bind us, but it's also a remarkable portrayal of how we move forward, stumble, get up again and rebuild our lives when we need to the most. Suspenseful, elegant, so full of life and the ghosts we carry, this is, quite simply, beautiful storytelling." —Paul Yoon, author of Run Me To Earth
This information about The Mythmakers was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Keziah Weir is a Senior Editor at Vanity Fair. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, Esquire, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She grew up in California and British Columbia, and currently lives in Maine with her husband and dog.
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