Excerpt from The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chapter One

It Starts with Us

First of all, it wasn't even that hard. The way they went on, all those writers, so incessantly, so dramatically, they might have been going down the mines on all fours with a plastic spoon clenched between their teeth to loosen the diamonds, or wading in raw sewage to find the leak in the septic line, or running into burning buildings with forty-five pounds of equipment on their backs. But this degree of whining over the mere act of sitting down at a desk, or even reclining on a sofa, and … typing?

Not so hard. Not hard at all, actually.

Of course, she'd had a ringside seat for the writing of her late husband's final novel, composed—or at least completed—during the months of their all-too-brief marriage. She'd also had the master-class-for-one of his previous novel, the wildly successful Crib. True, the actual writing of that novel had predated their meeting, but she'd still come away from it with a highly nuanced understanding of how that extraordinary book had been made, its specific synthesis of fiction (his) and fact (her own). So that helped.

Another thing that helped? It was a truth universally acknowledged that finding an agent and then a publisher were hoops of fire that anyone else who wrote a novel had to face, but she, herself, was to be exempt from that particular ordeal. She, because of who she already was—the executor of her late husband's estate, with sole control of his wildly valuable literary properties—would never need to supplicate herself at the altar of the Literary Market Place! She could simply step through those hoops, to effective, prestigious representation and the Rolls-Royce of publishing experiences, thanks to Matilda (her late husband's agent) and Wendy (his editor), two women who happened to be at the apex of their respective professions. (She knew this not just from her own impressions but empirically; a certain disgruntled writer had taken revenge on the publishing monde by ranking every editor and agent from apex to nadir on his website—and making public their email addresses!—and even people who thought him otherwise demented admitted that his judgment, in these matters, was accurate). Having Matilda and Wendy was an incalculable advantage; the two women knew everything there was to know about books, not only how to make them better but how to make them sell, and she, personally, had zero interest in writing a novel if it wasn't going to sell like that other novel, the one nominally written by her late husband, Jake Bonner. (Though with certain unacknowledged assistance.)

Initially, she'd had no more intention of writing a novel than she had, say, of starting a fashion line or a career as a DJ. She did read books, of course. She always had. But she read them in the same way she shopped for groceries, with the same practicalities and (until recently!) eye on the budget. For years she had read three or four books a week for her job producing the local radio show of a Seattle misogynist, dutifully making notes and pulling the most sensational quotes, preparing Randy, her boss, to sound like he'd done the bare minimum to prepare for his interviews: political memoirs, sports memoirs, celebrity memoirs, true crime, local-chef cookbooks, and yes, the rare novel, but only if there was some kind of a TV tie-in or a Seattle connection. Hers had been a constant enforced diet of reading, digesting, and selectively regurgitating the relentless buffet of books Randy had no intention of reading himself.

Jacob Finch Bonner had been the author of one of those rare novels, passing through Seattle with his gargantuan bestseller, the aptly named Crib, to appear at the city's most prestigious literary series. She had lobbied hard to have him on the show, and she had prepared Randy as carefully as ever for their interview—not that it mattered, Randy being Randy—or perhaps even more carefully. She'd left the radio station and the West Coast a couple of months later, to ascend to the role of literary spouse and widow.

Excerpted from The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Copyright © 2024 by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Excerpted by permission of Celadon. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.