The Tell: Book summary and reviews of The Tell by Hester Kaplan

The Tell Summary

An elegant and haunting novel of love and family, The Tell demands that we reconsider our notions of marriage—duty, compromise, betrayal, and the choice to stand by or leave the ones we love.

Mira and Owen's marriage is less stable than they know when Wilton Deere, an aging, no longer famous TV star moves in to the grand house next door. With plenty of money and plenty of time to kill, Wilton is charming but ruthless as he inserts himself into the couple's life in a quest for distraction, friendship—and most urgently—a connection with Anya, the daughter he abandoned years earlier. Facing stresses at home and work, Mira begins to accompany Wilton to a casino and is drawn to the slot machines. Escapism soon turns to full-on addiction and a growing tangle of lies and shame that threatens her fraying marriage and home. Betrayed and confused, Owen turns to the mysterious Anya, who is testing her own ability to trust her father after many years apart.

The Tell is a finely-wrought novel about risk: of dependence, of responsibility, of addiction, of trust, of violence. Told with equal parts suspense, sympathy, and psychological complexity, it shows us the intimate and shifting ways in which we reveal ourselves before we act, and what we assume but don't know about those closest to us.

The Tell Reviews

"Kaplan writes with remarkable acuity about the psychological challenges faced by each of her vulnerable characters. ... Highly recommended for readers who enjoy the psychologically complex work of Annie Proulx, or Stewart O'Nan." - Booklist

"Hester Kaplan is a master of her craft, and in The Tell she uses her prodigious talent to put a marriage under her microscope. Every sentence of this book is breathtaking." - Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle

"Hester Kaplan brings such fresh language and uncanny insight to whatever her keen eye lands upon, it's as if she creates it anew. Everything, everyone, every inflection in The Tell is charged with precision, feeling, and consequence." - Leah Hager Cohen, author of The Grief of Others

"The Tell is an homage to The Great Gatsby: The competing forces of true love and false idols are played out beautifully in the course of a roiling relationship with a larger-than-life neighbor. This is a wonderful book." - Antonya Nelson, author of Bound

"Gorgeous and haunting, Kaplan's riveting new novel about what we fight to hide, or ache to reveal about ourselves, grabs you by the throat and builds to a crescendo that's pure Greek tragedy. It's hard not to use the word genius." - Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You

"The Tell is an engrossing novel, at once richly observed and tautly plotted. Wilton Deere is one of the most riveting and unsettling characters I've encountered in a long time. I read this hungrily, and with great pleasure." - Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Ms. Hempel Chronicles

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