The Sequel

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains explicit descriptions of sexual violence, domestic abuse, suicide, and murder.

Anna Williams-Bonner is the main character of the novel. The third-person narrator inhabits her consciousness throughout the narrative and depicts the narrative world according to her perception of it. This formal choice thus renders The Sequel Anna’s story and compels all of the narrative action and tension to arise from Anna’s consciousness, character, and inner world.

Anna invented and adopted the Anna Williams-Bonner identity some years prior to the narrative present when she met and married Jake Bonner. She assumed the role of Jake’s wife, and after killing Jake for exploiting her story in his novel Crib, she assumed the role of his widow. She relishes this latter identity, because it has earned her the “wet eyes, vivid smiles, [and] universal support” of her newfound public following (6). She receives sympathy for her husband’s alleged death by suicide and is in turn welcomed into the literary world by proxy. When she decides to publish “her fictional (!) novel” (7), The Afterword, she gets to work with Jake’s former editor Wendy Marder and his former agent Matilda Salter. She is lauded for her publication and is embraced by the publishing world and her new fan base.