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THE SEQUEL by Jean Hanff Korelitz Celadon Books, October 2024 293 pages $29.00 ISBN: 1250875471

This novel is a strip-tease. Instead of uncovering a desired and sensual living body, what are uncovered are hidden identities, buried pasts, two cases of plagiarism, and a fair number of bodies. Although written in third person, the novel has readers accompany the murderer as she struggles to maintain the appearance of innocence.

Dramatis personae: Diana Parker, a.k.a. Rose Parker, a.k.a. Anna Williams Bonner, author of a new book about a woman who is grieving her husband, dead of an overdose; Patrick Bisset, father of Diana-Rose-Anna's only child, raped by Diana-Rose-Anna, and unfortunately no longer with us; Jacob Bonner, famous author of novels Crib and Lapse, quite suddenly dead, but not of a drug overdose; Evan Parker, Diana-Rose-Anna's only brother, deceased; other suddenly deceased persons, book editors and publicists, media personalities, lawyers, amateur authors, bookstore owners, and consumers of Anna's new novel who want to talk about their own tragedies with Anna at book signing events.

Imagine a matryoshka containing infinite copies of herself. Instead of a charming piece of folk art, our little mother is, alas, a murderer. We read Anna's story here, in Korelitz's novel. Unscrew the matryoshka and shake out the next copy: Anna writes her own novel, fictionalizing, of course, the more unsavory parts of her character. Next matryoshka: she marries a man who is writing a novel about (unbeknownst to him, maybe?) how Anna killed her family members. Anna's husband takes the story, nearly verbatim, from a manuscript he received from … Anna's brother, about … how Anna killed her family members.

Let's add another layer, one of the smaller, hidden dolls inside the matryoshka's marvellous womb: another author began harassing Jacob Bonner, Anna's husband, for plagiarism. Now that Jacob is dead, the harassment falls on Anna, for … plagiarism. When Anna begins to research who might be harassing her, she finds herself in danger, maybe even in danger of being murdered. What would she become, then? Just another plot, in a graveyard and in a novel.

Tell me this. When we write autobiographical novels (slightly fictionalized, of course), are we plagiarizing from real life? When Anna's editor hints that Anna and her husband's novels really have astonishing similarities, that editor encourages Anna to write a novel about the topic. The great ironies concerning who controls his or her life, and who rewrites lives, are thickly spread over the novel. Add to this, verbal witticisms, unexpected turns, and sly jabs at editors and the like, and that is what the reader of THE SEQUEL is in for.

Complaint: murderers are not very nice. Accompanying a murderer through 293 pages is a long visit with a sociopath.

§ Cathy Downs is professor emerita, English, American literature, Texas A&M University-Kingsville. These days she makes quilts, cultivates a garden, remodels a home, feeds the cats, and enjoys dipping into reading of the mysterious kind.

Reviewed by Cathy Downs, November 2024

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