The Mythmakers
A Novel
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer PrizeOne of Harper Bazaar's Best Books of 2023
Three writers, two marriages, one affair—infinite sides to the story. A beguiling nesting doll of a novel about husbands and wives, the battles between creative ambition and love, and the timeless question of who owns a story. Named a best book of the summer by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Shondaland, Harper's Bazaar, ELLE, Bustle, and Literary Hub.
Sal Cannon is a struggling magazine writer, dealing with the professional humiliation of being conned by a serial liar. She’s close to rock-bottom when she reads a short story by Martin Keller, the much older author she met at a literary event years ago. Much to her surprise, the piece is about her and their brief encounter. Desperate to read more of the unpublished novel from which the story is taken, she is shocked to learn that Martin has died. But as her own life and relationships fall apart, Sal makes a rash decision: she will seek out Martin’s widow, Moira, and convince her to let Sal read the rest of Martin’s novel. Her novel.
Over a single summer, Sal will insert herself into Moira’s life. Or is it the other way around? As Sal sifts through Martin’s papers and learns more about Moira, she discovers the larger, ever-shifting story of not just one marriage but two, as she unravels the secret histories of those closest to Martin Keller.
The Mythmakers is a seductive nesting doll of a book that grapples with perspective and memory, as well as the battles between creative ambition and love. It’s a novel about the trials and tribulations of finding out who you are, and those moments when the trajectories of our lives are forever altered.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Weir, an editor at Vanity Fair, debuts with the engrossing narrative of Sal Cannon, a magazine writer who recognizes herself in a short story by a famous novelist. The story, published in the Paris Review by the late Martin Keller, a contemporary of Norman Mailer, includes a detail from Sal's brief encounter with Keller six years earlier, when they flirted at an event and he took a silver barrette from her hair. This detail appears in the story, which is about a young woman's effect on an older writer's imagination. It turns out the story was excerpted from a longer work, and Sal pitches a feature on Keller, hoping to get her hands on his manuscript. She's already in a vulnerable place, having blundered a profile of a playwright in her desire to tell a good story. After she gets the assignment, she talks with Keller's widow, Moira, hoping to pick up clues about why she inspired Keller. Along the way, Weir shifts the perspective to Moira, Martin, and other characters related to the couple, delving into themes of creative ambition. Weir has a journalist's eye for mood and setting, whether in her perceptive account of Sal's trials or her astute portrayal of Martin's turbulent early years as a novelist. It's a rather auspicious debut.
