The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz Review

Literary widow Anna Williams-Bonner decides to write her own bestseller, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s just that easy to write an acclaimed commercial novel, even when you’ve never written a word of fiction in your life, and soon she’s as famous and wealthy as her late husband! But oh no someone knows her secret - what’s she gonna dooo…

Fuck me this is an awful book, even by the low standards of airport fiction, which is basically the genre books like these fall into. I thought it was a clever idea to title a sequel “The Sequel” and I liked the cover design which fills in the blank on the cover of the first book - that’s all the praise I’ll give this because this is the most pointless novel.

Precious little happens in the entirety of the feeble story. Jean Hanff Korelitz tediously recounts everything that happened in the first book in case you forgot it. Which might be useful for those who read The Plot in 2021 and needed brushing up (or maybe you didn’t need it and remembered it well enough?) but for someone who just read The Plot, it was excruciatingly boring to wade through once again.

Worse, Korelitz goes back and unnecessarily fills in the blanks of the first book because she has so little to offer in this new book. Scenes like how Anna got pregnant in the first place or exactly how her brother died are so superfluous but we get them in needlessly drawn-out detail anyway. Ugh.

Even simple scenes like Anna finding out that someone’s been mailing her in-laws or publisher extracts from her brother’s novels take an age to get through - ten pages of waffle to find this out, and this happens constantly throughout. Pages and pages of rubbish - then an obvious decision is made or a non-surprise is revealed. Rinse and repeat to test your audience’s dwindling patience.

Very occasionally Anna fixes the wagon of someone she thinks is a threat to her but these scenes are nothing more than an underwhelming conclusion to an extended sequence of uninteresting blah with the dreariest characters. Far from being the female Tom Ripley, which I believe is what Korelitz is shooting for, Anna is simply a bore. This is the furthest thing from a thriller you can get.

I absolutely hated The Sequel. Barely anything happens and what does is a waste of time - you honestly don’t need to read this if you’ve read The Plot. The Plot is a perfectly contained novel and didn’t need a sequel (or, god help us, another book). The Sequel adds nothing to the first book. Utter drek - do not bother.