Mystery/Thriller Reading Friends discussion

Segment three, chapters 18-24 for discussion of The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz. I believe this will cover the second half of part three of the book.
Spoilers Welcome on this topic. If the first to post, please briefly summarize to guide the discussion. Thanks!

Chapters 18 - 23

Jake is glued to his computer watching the activity generated by Talented Tom. The McMillan Publishing Group met again and were chagrined at Tom’s response. The good news was that since there was no evidence, and nothing more to report, new stories had fallen off. Tom sounded like just the kind of disgruntled person who comes out of the woodwork when a successful book is published.

CRIB pages --------
Samantha’s mother is not a fan of doctors so she ignores the lump in her breast. Samantha notices it when it starts poking out of her bra. It’s cancer and mom goes for two chemo treatments but they are unpleasant so she stops going. She’ll take her chances. Shortly thereafter she passes away, leaving Samantha and Maria to live in the house. Maria is becoming independent, doing a lot of the shopping and cooking.

Jake and Anne are at their 6 month anniversary dinner. She presses him to share what’s bothering him. He denies anything is wrong. She isn’t buying it and starts to express doubts about his feelings. Jake panics; is he about to lose the best thing in his life? Jake proposes and Anne happily accepts. They don’t want to wait. They buy a ring and later get married and have dinner with a friend and his work colleagues. Anne is a hit with his publishing colleagues. Matilda almost spills the beans about Talented Tom but Jake manages to deflect her. Upon arriving home, Jake finds a letter from Talented Tom. He is ready to announce Jake’s crime to the world. Jake decides to go on the offensive and try to figure out who Talented Tom is. The only connection he can think of is Ripley. He reaches out to Martin and tells him he has comments on the book sample Martin sent him. They arrange to meet in Vermont.

Anne wants to come with him to Vermont but Jake says he wants to focus on writing. He meets Martin for lunch and spends a lot of time pumping him for information about Evan. When Martin starts to get suspicious/reticent he switches to ideas in Martin's book. After they part Jake goes to the tavern Evan used to own.

Jake talks up a woman at the tavern whose brother-in-law is the new owner. He pumps them for information but only gets filler. Evan’s parents dies of carbon monoxide poisoning in the family home. His sister died later. They describe the house and the town to Jake. When she mentions Evan’s surviving niece, Jake acts like this is news -- he has forgotten this fact.

CRIB---pages 146-147
Maria is a clone of Samantha. She doesn’t care about the social groups at her school, about friendships or about social events. She drops friends without explanation. She is a lesbian and has a girlfriend but they break up. Maria quickly connects with another girl named Gabriella.

Jake finds Evan’s house. The owner comes home while he is outside and invites him in. She lives there with her partner. They have completely upgraded the house but the Jake finds the renovation hideous. Evan died in the bedroom upstairs, they didn’t know him. His niece put it on the market one week after his death, which seemed fast. Jake learns that she also grew up in the house. Jake is stunned when he notices a stencil of pineapples around the door that has been left untouched from the original design. He’s read about this somewhere and it suddenly falls into place. Evan’s story is based on people he grew up with, the oldest cliché in the book, and someone (the niece?) was pissed not at the theft of an idea, but the fact of her personal history made public.

CRIB
Samantha is called in to school to sign for something. She learns that Maria has gotten a scholarship to Ohio State. Maria never mentioned it. Samantha goes home and searches Maria’s bedroom until she finds the acceptance papers from OSU. Maria doesn’t want to march for graduation. She and Gabriella, who had become a fixture around the house, break up. Maria still hasn’t mentioned OSU, but she is beginning to get rid of things and clean out.

Jake searches on the internet for Evan’s niece. He has to find her before she does more damage. He finds the sister’s name and an obituary which is very scant. It does not mention the daughter’s name. He registers for Ancestry.com and finds the Parker family tree including the niece’s name -- Rose Parker. Nothing else is on the Internet so he finds the name of the attorney who handled the sale of the house and visits his office. He learns that Maria now lives in Georgia, going to school. She wanted a clean start.

Chapter 24
Anne calls him while he is driving back, extremely agitated. She’s gotten a letter from Talented Tom: “ask your husband about the plot he stole for CRIB.” She went online and found all of the posts from Tom and others and is livid. Why did he keep all this from her? How did this person get their address? Jake will explain all when he gets home, which he does. At first angry, she calms down. Even if he used someone else’s idea, he wrote the book. Jake is relieved; now there are two of them who know the truth.

CRIB pp 212-213
Maria asks to borrow the car. What for? She’s moving out. She’s gotten a scholarship to OSU. She’ll drive the car up, unpack, drive it back and make her way back. When were you going to tell me, Samantha asks? I had to find out from my old teacher, then search your room until I found the papers. Maria says I thought so and walks out. Samantha follows her and grabs her arm and swings her arm around. Maria loses her balance and cracks her head against a post. Samantha waits for her to get up but she doesn’t; she’s dead. Samantha sits for a long time, then gets up. She packs the car up, along with Maria’s body. She drives to the backwoods of neighboring Pennsylvania, a very remote location, where she sees a sign for a cabin for rent. She rents the cabin which is even more remote. She buries Maria’s body, spends the night, and leaves.

I am glad Jake is forced to come clean about Talented Tom. He should have told Anne much sooner, he knew it could come to her attention either through Tom or through a friend who stumbled upon it and mentioned it to her. He's lucky she comes around after her initial anger.

Samantha is one cold fish. She has shown no signs of mother affection. She did her duty of raising Maria but that's about it. Hard to fathom living in a house with your child for 15 years or so and not developing an affection. Maria's death came as a surprise, and so unnecessary, but Samantha seems unaffected by it except as a problem to be solved. But I guess that's characteristic of who she is.

Getting close to the end. I have a nagging thought in the back of my mind but it seems preposterous. We'll see if it turns out to be correct.

Carol/Bonadie wrote: "Getting close to the end. I have a nagging thought in the back of my mind but it seems preposterous. We'll see if it turns out to be correct."

i started reading the book but it just wasn't grabbing me so I'm doing something I never thought I'd do- I'm reading all the summaries. your summaries are so detailed, carol, that i feel like I've read the book! i have a thought in the back of my head, too. based on nothing really since i haven't read the book, just something I'm wondering. :)

Sherry that's so interesting, and I so glad you are reading them. I've been thinking that when it's just one or two people in the conversation it's almost a waste to do all these summaries, maybe makes more sense to just read the book and have a discussion at the end. I was planning on talking that through with Ann.
I've finished the book now and at maybe the last chapter I stopped taking notes because there was SO much exposition going on. So the last thread will have detail on a few chapters, and the final one will say something like "they talked about who did it and why." LOL!
Of course when the first person starts summarizing you don't necessarily know how many people are going to follow along.

all good points, carol. i love your summaries because they are so detailed. the premise of the book intrigued me but I think I just don't like her style of writing. felt the same about her other book. hope they make a movie or mini-series out of this one, too~

Sherry wrote: "all good points, carol. i love your summaries because they are so detailed. the premise of the book intrigued me but I think I just don't like her style of writing. felt the same about her other bo..."

Sherry I had the thought that it would make a good movie. I wonder if it's been optioned.

Carol: re summaries; you have made some good points, from both sides. I am happy to discuss ideas and alternatives. ;)
It is hard to know what response we will have for a group read. I do appreciate the summaries and checking in along the way. I probably won't finish this one until the weekend and look forward to hearing if you and Sherry had your hunches on the ending right. I am good with your suggestion of "what happened and why" ;)
~~The last three group reads, if you count this one, have been light on participation. A discussion at the end might well have been ok.
~~The summaries do give more life to the timeline of reading since they help refresh memories of the content or of points to not spoil with future happenings. (And allow someone to jump in when they are skimming) lol
~~It also depends on style of the book. Some need only plot points and no chapter sections, some are written with chapters as plot points.
Let's be flexible!
Carol/Bonadie wrote: "Sherry that's so interesting, and I so glad you are reading them. I've been thinking that when it's just one or two people in the conversation it's almost a waste to do all these summaries, maybe maybe makes more sense to just read the book and have a discussion at the end..
...so the last thread will have detail on a few chapters, and the final one will say something like "they talked about who did it and why." LOL!
."

Carol: I thought the same about Samantha. She did have her future and dreams stifled. I wondered because of her distance and lack of emotional involvement if Maria might have been on the autistic spectrum or some other reason such as Samantha being neglectful or cruel or just letting her deep resentment show. The need for her to only work from home seemed extreme.

Carol/Bonadie wrote: "Samantha is one cold fish. She has shown no signs of mother affection. She did her duty of raising Maria but that's about it. Hard to fathom living in a house with your child for 15 years or so and..."

Ann wrote: "Carol: re summaries; you have made some good points, from both sides. I am happy to discuss ideas and alternatives. ;)
It is hard to know what response we will have for a group read. I do appreciat..."

good thoughts, ann. i don't get to read a lot of the group reads with the group because of other reading commitments, especially with the F2F group I facilitate for the bookstore. plus, some months it seems like this group reads more than one book and it gets to be too much for me because I also have other books I want to read and I only can read so many books in a month! when I have read with the group, I forget what chapter I'm on so it's sometimes hard to remember to stop and comment or I've read past and don't want to give away any spoilers. lol
maybe a new thread to discuss how to handle book discussions going forward might be a good idea?

Sherry, that sounds like a good plan, I will start a new thread and see what we come up with for future group read discussion formats!

Sherry wrote: "maybe a new thread to discuss how to handle book discussions going forward might be a good idea?.."