The Mythmakers, Keziah Weir
The Mythmakers, Keziah Weir
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

The Mythmakers

Author: Keziah Weir

Narrator: Brefny Caribou

Unabridged: 12 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/13/2023


Synopsis

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 When Sal learns the story is excerpted from his unpublished novel, she reaches out to the story’s editor—only to learn that Martin is deceased.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.

About Keziah Weir

Keziah Weir is a senior editor at Vanity Fair. Her writing has appeared in The New York TimesElleEsquire, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She grew up in California and British Columbia, and currently lives in Maine with her husband and dog.


Reviews

Goodreads review by emma

first book in a while to make me Rage. this put me right back in my mean era! it sets out to write about love and ambition, about who owns stories, about the flaws of people and of writing and of science. all interesting things. unfortunately it chooses to do so with a writing style and a protagonist......more

Goodreads review by Callie

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for this eARC in exchange for an honest review. My rating for The Mythmakers is 4.5/5 stars which, in my rating system, means “I really really enjoyed this book.” Keziah Weir’s debut novel is a triumph. Her writing is compelling in a way that makes it clear that s......more