Jean Hanff Korelitz
Native New Yorker! Graduated from Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge. I'm the author of eight novels: THE LATECOMER (2022), THE PLOT (The Tonight Show's "Summer Reads" pick for 2021), THE UNDOING, originally published as YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN (adapted by David E. Kelley for HBO and starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Donald Sutherland), ADMISSION (adapted as the 2013 film of the same name, starring Tina Fey, Lily Tomlin and Paul Rudd), THE DEVIL AND WEBSTER, THE WHITE ROSE, THE SABBATHDAY RIVER and A JURY OF HER PEERS, as well as a middle-grade reader, INTERFERENCE POWDER, and a collection of poetry, THE PROPERTIES OF BREATH.
Watch for television adaptations of THE PLOT and THE LATECOMER!
I'm the founder of BOOKTHEWRITER, a New York City based service that offers "Pop-Up Book Groups" where readers can discuss books with their authors. (Online through Spring 2021) Please join our mailing list at www.bookthewriter.com to hear about our events.
If you've become aware of my work via THE UNDOING, you should know that my novel differs significantly from the adaptation -- and that's fine with me! Just know that the twists you might be expecting will likely not be there on the page. Other twists, yes, but you'll have to read the book to find them.
Thanks so much for your interest in my work!
Jean Hanff Korelitz
“Portia remembered her interview in the small office upstairs...in which she had been so shy, so terrified about not being good enough, not getting this thing, this chance, which she had only just discovered she wanted very badly.”
“Teammates...were fine things. Piling onto the bus before the game, edgy with shared nerves, egging one another on with the genial, meaningless phrase C'mon, you guys!, collapsing back into the same seats for the ride home—the sense of striving in accord had been a sweet part of high school. Possibly the sweetest. But the camaraderie had not survived graduation, or even the off-seasons. Her teammates, passing in the school corridors in winter or spring, were downshifted to nodding acquaintances who had once been close, that past connection floating off like cotton candy on the tongue.”
“She lacked the sheen of money, muscular good health, good skin, good clothes.”
“All ghost stories come to this, she understood. All ghost stories end in one of two ways: You are dead or I am dead. If people only understood this, Portia thought, they would never be frightened, they would only need to ask themselves, Who among us has died?And then she occurred to her that she was the ghost in her story. She had spent years haunting her own life, without ever noticing.”
“There is a sound to waiting. It sounds like held breath pounding its fists against the walls of the lung, damp and muffled beats.”