The Mythmakers

By: Keziah Weir

Narrated by: Brefny Caribou

Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

From an acclaimed senior editor at Vanity Fair comes an intoxicating 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 When Sal learns the story is excerpted from his unpublished novel, she reaches out to the story’s editor—only to learn that Martin is deceased.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 battles between creative ambition and love. It’s a story 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.

©2023 Keziah Weir (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio

Meandering brilliance

I read some audience reviews on another platform hating on this semi-autobiographical-seeming novel (as all novels about writers seem) for its navel gazing self indulgence, or whatever, yet male authors have written such books for eons and receive but a fraction of similar criticism (typically from critics or their contemporaries). When the narrator behaved insufferably, she only seemed realistic—it only makes the interactions and inner thoughts seem authentic. Where the story went off on tangents she always reigned it back in. I always wound up being grateful for the extra plot because I enjoyed the writing and the underlying philosophical musings so much.