I really enjoyed the “plot” of this book – it is about a writer who writes a best-seller based on a “plot” that is not his. It was also well written, and while I wouldn’t call it great literature, it was a very entertaining page-turner. I kept reading it right up to the end of the big reveal, even though I had already guessed the identity of the “bad guy” soon after that person made an appearance in the book.

The protagonist of The Plot is Jake Bonner, whose single-minded focus in life is to become a successful writer. He has some talent, is extremely hard-working, and has no vices such as excessive drinking or drugs that are the downfall of many creative people. Despite this, the kind of success that he dreams of eludes him. His first book did reasonably well and got decent reviews, but his second book was an abject failure, and he is down in the dumps when it comes to inspiration or motivation.

To make ends meet while he continues to pursue his writing career, Jake does some teaching in writing programs, and during one of these sessions, he encounters an arrogant student, Evan, who claims to have a plot for a book that will be a guaranteed bestseller. While Evan keeps his cards close to his chest, he does, in the one and only meeting he has with Jake, tell him what this plot is. And Jake is forced to acknowledge that it is indeed amazing and would make for a book that is a runaway success. Also, despite his arrogance, Evan is a decent writer, and Jake has every expectation that Evan will finish and publish his book to widespread critical acclaim and commercial success.

Except that this does not happen. Jake never hears of Evan or his book, and after a few years – the time it might take for the book to be written and published – Jake looks up Evan and finds that he has died, just a few months after they had crossed paths at that writing program that Jake taught. Presumably, Evan’s brilliant plot idea has died with him as there has been no book published with that plot that Jake is aware of.

While Jake is fundamentally a good human being and believes in an ethical code of conduct as a writer – so, for instance, he would never plagiarize actual content from other writers – he is torn about what to do with Evan’s plot idea. He could, of course, just let it die like Evan, but it is so brilliant, he feels that it deserves to see the light of day. It can’t not be brought to life. And since Evan is no longer there to give it a form, maybe he can? How would it be any different from getting an idea for a novel from a newspaper article, a chance remark, an overheard conversation, or any of the other myriad ways in which writers get inspiration? Maybe, this is the muse that has found its way to him to resuscitate his career.

So Jake writes a book using Evan’s plot idea, and it is a smash hit. It climbs and stays on top of all the bestseller lists, it is picked up by Oprah, and it is being sought for movie adaptations from top directors like Steven Spielberg. Jake becomes rich, famous, and successful beyond his wildest dreams, with book signings, invited talks, and TV interviews. He should have been on top of the world, but he always plagued by a sense of uneasiness, of guilt, of the fear of being exposed about the fact that the plot of his book was not really his. Even though the writing is fully his own and he is the one who gave form to the idea, he does not feel the satisfaction of owning it.

And his worst fears are realized when he gets an anonymous email out of the blue saying, “You are a thief.” The campaign from this unknown person to expose him slowly escalates to other social media platforms as well, and while this kind of smear campaign has become a fairly common occurrence with successful writers with the rise of social media — many publishers now have legal counsel on their payroll to handle accusations of plagiarism – it terrifies Jake, because, in his case, it is actually true. While he has written the entire book himself, he did, indeed, steal the plot.

But who is this anonymous person making the accusation and how do they even know about it, given that Evan is dead? The bulk of The Plot is focused on Jake’s increasingly desperate search to find the answer to this question and try and track down this person. And even though I had guessed the “whodunit” early on – it wasn’t that hard — I still found the book compelling enough to want to keep reading it all the way through. The quality of the writing is very good, and it makes you empathize strongly with Jake even though he has done something that is morally reprehensible. You are rooting for him to be able to get out of the hole that he has dug himself into. Whether he is able to do this or not is ultimately what makes for the suspenseful ending of The Plot.

While I greatly appreciated the writing quality and overall readability of the book, I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it had not been so easy to guess the identity of the anonymous accuser well before the big reveal!

The Plot
Author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
Publisher: Celadon Books
Publication Date: May 2021

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Contributor: Lachmi Khemlani is a fan of the written word.