The Sequel

Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel The Sequel (2024) is the second installment of The Book series and is preceded by The Plot (2021). Like many of Korelitz’s previous novels, The Sequel is a satirical suspense and crime thriller. The novel focuses on Anna Williams-Bonner’s story in the wake of murdering her husband, bestselling novelist Jake Bonner. After Anna publicly mourns Jake’s alleged death by suicide, someone begins sending her threatening messages and excerpts from the manuscript of her late brother, Evan Parker. Anna has spent her life trying to cover up her past life as Evan’s sister, Dianna Parker, and she fears that the publication of Evan’s manuscript may reveal her manipulations and crimes. 

Written from the third-person limited point of view, The Sequel explores The Ethics of Storytelling, The Intersection of the Past and Present, and The Tension Between Truth and Fiction. Both The Plot and The Sequel are being adapted as limited television series by Hulu.

This guide refers to the 2024 Celadon Books hardcover edition.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain explicit descriptions of sexual violence, domestic abuse, homicide (including the violent death of a child), and suicide.

Plot Summary

Anna Williams-Bonner now lives in her late husband’s apartment in New York City, relishing her recent literary success. After killing Jake for exploiting her life story in his successful novel, Crib, Anna decided to publish her own novel, The Afterword. She employs the services of an elite literary agent named Miranda Salter and a prominent book editor named Wendy Marder. They set her up with exclusive interview sessions and add countless stops to her upcoming book tour. Anna never wanted to be a writer, but she is enjoying her sudden success.

At one stop on the tour, Anna is horrified when a note appears in a book for her to sign and mentions Evan. In the past, Anna killed Evan when he threatened to publicize her life story in his manuscript. She grew up as Dianna Parker, and now, she doesn’t want anyone to associate her current life with her childhood in West Rutland, Vermont. The note indicates that someone knows about her past identity and her crimes. Over the following weeks, Anna encounters several more envelopes containing excerpts of her late brother’s manuscript. The manuscript tells the story of Diandra and Ruby: the names that Evan assigned to Dianna and her daughter Rose. With each new envelope, Anna’s fear of discovery intensifies.

Years ago, Anna was living as Dianna in her parents’ ancestral Vermont home. Evan was a bully, but her parents favored him. Dianna was desperate to escape Vermont, but she became pregnant after Evan’s best friend, Patrick Besette, attacked and raped her. She tried killing Patrick, herself, and her unborn child in a car crash, but she only succeeded in killing Patrick. Years later, her daughter Rose grew up to be a capable, intelligent young woman. Still desperate to escape Vermont, Dianna killed Rose and assumed her identity, then moved to Athens, Georgia, took Rose’s scholarships, and started attending college. However, when she noticed Evan talking about a book he was writing online, she feared that he would expose her crimes. She murdered Evan and destroyed his manuscript, then sold the family house using the legal assistance of an Athens lawyer named Arthur Pickens. Then she adopted her new Anna identity and moved west, where she met Jake before returning to the East Coast.

In the narrative present, Anna decides to contact Jake and Evan’s former associates to determine who has been sending the manuscript excerpts. When she becomes convinced that a man named Martin Purcell is the culprit, she kills him. However, more excerpts surface, and she realizes that Pickens might be to blame, so she breaks into his house and finds Evan’s manuscript. Pickens knocks her unconscious, drugs and binds her, and drives her to the north Georgia woods, where she buried Evan and Rose. He tells to dig up the bodies and demands the royalties from Jake’s books, threatening to expose her crimes if she refuses. Anna kills Pickens and flees with his gun.

Before his death, Pickens informed her that the women who bought her family’s old house also know about her connection to Evan and Rose. She enters the house on the pretense of giving the new residents, Betty Bessette and Sylvia, two signed copies of Jake’s novel. Betty attacks Anna and accuses her of killing her brother, Patrick. Anna reveals what Patrick did to her, then kills Betty and Sylvia. She then takes Evan’s manuscript and burns down the house. She returns to New York and sells Jake’s old apartment, then meets with her agent and editor, who encourage her to write a sequel to The Afterword. Anna feels content and happy for the first time in months and decides to embrace her new life as a fiction writer.