It starts when a journalist accepts what he believes will be a softball assignment: a profile of Mayah Isle, a powerful talk show host and the queen of a popular self-transformation philosophy called the “personality movement.”
But the reporter quickly intuits that Mayah’s adopted son Masha—who is hidden from the public—is the real story. And over the next two decades, Masha becomes a leading voice for personality transformation, and the reporter enjoys better access to him than anyone.
That access becomes an increasingly fraught position as the movement crosses into questionable legal and ethical territory, even as Masha and Mayah become steadily more famous and influential.
Artistically innovative, darkly funny, and morally complex, The Book of Formation peers into the subconscious desires of our culture, and the celebrities and spiritual leaders we believe will save us. - Melville House