The Mythmakers
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- ¥1,800
発行者による作品情報
A New York Times Editors’ Choice
Named a Best New Book of the Year by Harper’s Bazaar
Named a Best Book of the Summer by Shondaland, SheReads, The Boston Globe, Harper’s Bazaar, and Reader’s Digest
From an acclaimed senior editor at Vanity Fair comes a “laudable” (The New York Times) debut novel about a young journalist who discovers a short story that’s inexplicably about her life—leading to an entanglement with the author’s widow, daughter, and former best friend.
Sal Cannon’s life is in shambles. Her relationship is crumbling, and her career in journalism hits a low point after it’s revealed that her profile of a playwright is full of inaccuracies. She’s close to rock-bottom when she reads a short story by Martin Keller: a much older author she met at a literary event years ago. Much to her shock, the story is about her and the moment they met. When Sal learns the story is excerpted from his unpublished novel, she reaches out to the story’s editor—only to learn that Martin is deceased. Desperate to leave her crumbling life behind and to read the manuscript from which the story was excerpted, Sal decides to find Martin’s widow, Moira.
Moira has made it clear that she doesn’t want to be contacted. But soon Sal is on a bus to upstate New York, where she slowly but surely inserts herself into Moira’s life. Or is it the other way around? As Sal sifts through Martin’s papers and learns more about Moira, the question of muse and artist arises—again and again. Even more so when Martin’s daughter’s story emerges. Who owns a story? And who is the one left to tell it?
The Mythmakers is a nesting doll of a book that grapples with perspective and memory, as well as the batteries between creative ambition and love. It’s a “page-turner” (theSkimm) about the trials and tribulations of finding out who you are, at any stage in your life, and how inspiration might find you in the strangest of places.
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.
