This book met my standards for a good piece of literature on so many levels. First of all, there were so many different ways to determine the significance of the title. The Plot refers to the plot that Jacob Finch Bonner, the protagonist, “borrowed” from a former student. The title also refers to the two stories in the novel—the one about Jacob and the one Jacob wrote in his book called Crib. There are at least two different interpretations that would require my revealing spoilers.
Jacob Finch Bonner (Jake) is a struggling writer who has become cynical about the students who sign up for a mediocre writing workshop at a little-known college called Ripley in Vermont. Evan Parker, one student who gets Jake’s attention at a writing workshop, is brashly self-confident in his conviction that he has planned a winning novel. When two years pass and Jake realizes that the book hasn’t been published, he conducts a google search and discovers that Evan has died. So, Jake writes the story learned from Evan. It becomes a bestseller, and Jake enjoys the fame of authoring a popular book until he begins to be called a thief in a series of emails and online posts.
Jake’s paranoia is palpable as the story progresses, and he tries to learn more about Evan, Evan’s family, and the town where Evan’s family was well known. As we read about Jake’s research into Evan’s life and read snippets of the novel Crib, which has a dictionary definition of minor theft or plagiarism, we see where the story is headed way before Jake understands who is taunting him.
Jean Hanff Korelitz, the author, does a great job of forcing the reader to consider what constitutes a small theft and how much of a plot can be borrowed or appropriated before it is truly plagiarism. Are there new stories to be told, or are all of the stories already told? She also uses irony and foreshadowing to create an excellent psychological thriller.
Some of the characters are well-developed, and even those that aren’t fleshed out are quite interesting. The author uses the characters to explore the concept of there being a fine line between what any ordinary person would do and what only a sociopath would do. This is mentioned a few times in the book, and we are close to the end before we can come to any conjectures or conclusions about which characters are typical and which suffer from mental illness. Nothing is clearcut in defining honesty and decency, especially in the world of publishing.
