BookBrowse Reviews The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz

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In this follow up to The Plot, the widow of a successful author turns her own life story into a bestselling novel, only to discover that certain secrets from her past will not stay buried.

In Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Sequel, Anna Williams-Bonner, the wife of recently deceased author Jacob Finch Bonner, is loving her new life as the widow of a man who wrote a blockbuster novel—if only to cash his royalty checks and ride the talk show sympathy circuit. Jacob was the protagonist of Korelitz's 2021 novel The Plot; in that book, one of Jacob's creative writing students wrote a nearly complete manuscript before dying of an overdose, after which Jacob stole the manuscript and passed it off as his own—revitalizing his moribund writing career but, in doing so, making himself vulnerable to mysterious threats and scandalous plagiarism accusations.

Now, in The Sequel, Jake is dead and Korelitz picks up where her first book dramatically left off—only this time from the viewpoint of his widow. After Jake's death, Anna is urged by his former agent and publisher to write a book of her own, telling her unique story as the spouse of a writer who gains success only to die by suicide a year later. The supremely confident—and contemptuous—Anna agrees; after all, "Why shouldn't she be as fine a writer as her dead husband, who had left literature so prematurely, so long before his many theoretically great works could be written?"

After a stint at a writer's colony, Anna writes an autobiographical novel titled The Afterword, a fictional account of her life with Jake and being a witness to his downward mental spiral in the wake of plagiarism charges by an anonymous harasser. The book is an instant bestseller. But at a signing on her book tour, she finds an enigmatic note on the half-title page for her to sign: Evan Parker, not forgotten. Evan Parker is the creative writing student whose manuscript Jake pilfered and passed off as his own in The Plot—and, it is revealed in that first book, has ties to Anna, who isn't who she seems to be. In The Sequel, the past refuses to stay buried: someone else knows about the provenance of Jake's novel, and quite possibly about who Anna really is.

Soon, photocopied chapters of Parker's unpublished novel arrive in Anna's mailbox, and whiffs of Jake's old scandal begin to percolate again, drawing unwanted attention that Anna—who is colder and more calculating than Jake was—intends to shut down "with the kind of extreme prejudice she had become pretty well known for, if only to herself." Working backward, she tracks down Jake's writing students to sniff out anyone who may have known Evan Parker or his unpublished story.

In Anna, Korelitz has brilliantly created a sympathetic antihero. Her sleuthing into the identity of her nemesis and what they want from her takes from her from New York City to Vermont, where Jake taught, and finally to Georgia; throughout this journey, her intelligence, fiery determination, and savvy instincts are impressive and compelling. Her backstory, which is developed over the course of the novel in tight prose flashbacks and from excerpts of Evan's manuscript, propels the plot hand-in-hand with her current actions. As she commits increasingly dastardly deeds in order to protect herself and her identity, the reader also learns, in scenes of stark and shattering revelations, about who she is and what she has done to become the person she is today.

And Anna is also delightfully sardonic and scornful in her assessments of fellow writers. "Through Jake she had met so many unpublished writers, and they were bitter people, but the irony was that they remained bitter even if they did manage to publish," Korelitz writes. The Sequel is as much a satire of the publishing industry that Anna navigates as it is a thriller. Through Anna, Korelitz skewers the narcissism attendant in writing circles, programs, and publishing contracts, poking fun at an industry that measures success by book sales and contracts with traditional, heavyweight publishers. Witty satire; a twisting, tangled plot; and a shocking ending make The Sequel a worthy successor to The Plot and a captivating binge read.

This review first ran in the November 6, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.