"The Plot" by Jean Hanff Korelitz

I’ve written before about the downside of choosing many of my reads from lists of prestigious literary award-winners or high-brow book reviews. I end up reading a lot of important, thoughtful, and beautiful literature, but it’s often not fun. Not that great literature has to be boring or depressing, but there’s usually a heaviness in subject or prose that can make the reading feel a bit like work. And I like to work for my literature, but I’m realizing that I don’t like to work all the time. Korelitz’s The Plot is an engrossing mystery/thriller about the motivations, justifications, and perils of writers. Most readers (myself included) will probably see the plot twists early, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the ride, even the stereotypical hackneyed ending. Despite some of the more overdone contrivances of the mystery genre, the book also raises plenty of issues of “ownership” in an age of over-sharing—when do we have the right to tell someone else’s story?