We’ve all had dinner guests who overstayed their welcome, but what if one of them refused to leave? That was the seed of an idea that eventually became Revenge Plot, my fourth novel, about an aspiring writer who takes a literary agent hostage during Christmas dinner. I’d been itching to write about the publishing industry, but I wanted to approach it from an angle I hadn’t encountered. What about the relationship between a writer and an agent? After all, literary agents are the first gatekeepers an aspiring novelist must get past, and that power dynamic seemed ripe for exploitation. Of course, no book is written in a vacuum. Here are six novels and authors that helped shape mine, from its premise and structure to its characters and twists.
Misery
Stephen King. Scribner, $18.99 trade paper (368p) ISBN 978-1-5011-4310-6
Revenge Plot owes a considerable debt to Misery, though I’ve flipped King’s premise on its head. In King’s novel, a deranged fan kidnaps a writer; in mine, a deranged writer kidnaps an agent. I even named my aspiring novelist Arnie as a nod to Annie Wilkes. Throw in an isolated location and a major snowstorm, and you can consider Revenge Plot a wink at Misery. Though—spoiler alert—no one loses a foot in my story.
The Dinner
Herman Koch, trans. from the Dutch by Sam Garrett. Random/Hogarth, $24 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7704-3785-5
One of my craft goals these past few years has been to write a novel that unfolds over a very short period of time. My last book, The Hitchcock Hotel, takes place over a weekend, but with this one, I resolved to compress the story even further: one (very tense, very violent) Christmas dinner. For inspiration, I looked to Dutch author Koch’s The Dinner, which I first read in 2019. I loved how Koch organized his novel around the courses of a meal, so I borrowed (stole?) the technique, dividing my story into Appetizers, Main Course, Second Helpings, Dessert, and Nightcap. Those headings gave me a framework for the mounting chaos. The challenge was finding enough story to fill an entire novel without stretching one evening beyond credibility. My solution? Devote the middle third to a book within the book—the manuscript Arnie has written. In the end, my story encompasses much more than a single dinner. Sometimes you have to start with one idea and let the story take you where it takes you.
My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante, trans. from the Italian by Ann Goldstein. Europa, $17 trade paper (336p) ISBN 978-1-60945-078-6
Embarrassingly, I have not yet read the Neapolitan Quartet. (My TBR list is never-ending.) But like much of the publishing industry and reading public, I’ve followed the mystery surrounding the pseudonymous Ferrante’s identity. Though the author has chosen to remain anonymous, it hasn’t stopped journalists or Reddit sleuths from trying to unmask her. When I decided to feature a pseudonymous author in my new novel, I drew inspiration from the mystique surrounding Ferrante—and our collective obsession with solving it. What do we actually gain by learning an author’s name and background? Does knowing who’s behind a book improve our experience of reading it? I’m still not sure I have a good answer.
The Plot
Jean Hanff Korelitz. Celadon, $28 (336p) ISBN 978-1-250-79076-7
The Plotis the first novel that made me feel seen—and not always in a flattering way—in my role as an author. Korelitz masterfully exposes the publishing industry’s foibles and hypocrisies while holding her author protagonist’s feet to the fire. No one escapes unscathed, and that’s as it should be. Whether you’re a writer, an agent, an editor, a salesperson, a bookseller, or a Bookstagrammer, we all have our roles to play and our grievances to air. And boy, do we love airing them. The Plotreminded me that the most delicious publishing satire doesn’t spare the people writing it.
Yellowface
R.F. Kuang. Morrow, $30 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-325083-3
I tore through Yellowface feverishly at a time when I was undergoing what one might call a crisis of confidence about my writing career. As with The Plot, I saw myself in Kuang’s pages: the rationalizations writers tell ourselves, the uncomfortable relatability of professional jealousy, the tangled relationship between success and self-worth. I watched Kuang’s protagonist, June Hayward, spiral further and further out of control, yet I couldn’t look away. I wouldn’t attempt to sketch out my own unhinged writer for many more months, but by the time I finished Yellowface, Arnie Tenderton had already taken root in a dark corner of my mind.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Agatha Christie. Morrow, $18.99 trade paper (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-322108-6
Whatever we attempt as thriller writers, Christie probably did it first. Without giving too much away about my books or hers, Christie was a master at sleight of hand—directing readers’ attention and suspicion in certain directions while distracting them from others. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a brilliant example of how narrative perspective can conceal a character’s true motives, even when the clues are hiding in plain sight. I wanted to pull off a similar trick in Revenge Plot: to make readers so certain they knew who the villain was that they might overlook the person standing right in front of them. Christie is far from the only suspense writer to craft an unreliable narrator, but she certainly set the bar high for the rest of us.
