About The Tell
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Original edition (January 8, 2013)
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.
About Hester Kaplan
Hester Kaplan is the author of The Edge of Marriage, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and Kinship Theory, a novel. Her short stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories series. She teaches in Lesley University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and lives in Rhode Island.
Find out more about Hester at her website. You can also follow her on Facebook and Pinterest.
Hester’s Tour Stops
Tuesday, January 8th: Good Girl Gone Redneck
Thursday, January 10th: Excellent Library
Tuesday, January 15th: Savvy Verse & Wit
Wednesday, January 16th: Tiffany’s Bookshelf
Thursday, January 17th: Books in the City
Monday, January 21st: Between the Covers
Wednesday, January 23rd: Speaking of Books
Monday, January 28th: Jenn’s Bookshelves
Tuesday, January 29th: Kritters Ramblings
Wednesday, January 30th: Bibliophiliac