'Tell' is a formally innovative novel which offers a portrait of a wealthy entrepreneur in the form of interview transcripts given by his long-serving gardener to a production company who are looking to make a film about his life. The unnamed narrator is at pains to be loyal and even-handed in her discussions about Curtis, her employer; while she doesn't sentimentalise him, she argues that, compared to many other super-rich businessmen, Curtis was fair and generous in his treatment of others. At the same time, she suggests that some of her colleagues might take a different view.

The form of this novel immediately plunges us into the story of Curtis's life, and allows us to piece together the key events and relationships of his life only gradually.: his troubled childhood living with a series of different foster parents; his seemingly happy marriage and successful working partnership with Lily; his relationships with a number of other women after Lily's death, including his art dealer, Karolina, and his would-be biographer, Lara; his sometimes strained relationships with his sons Conrad and Carl and his stepdaughter Katia; and his major accident after which he is a changed man. It transpires that Curtis has disappeared but this is only one of a number of mysteries that intrigues us as we read on.

At times 'Tell' reminded me of the HBO series Succession in its depiction of the lives of the mega-rich, although mild-mannered Curtis is a far-cry from Brian Cox's Logan Roy, and the perspective is very different here - more reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Remains of the Day' in which a servant provides an account of their master's life and achievements, whilst also revealing a fair bit about themselves. But again Jonathan Buckley is doing something slightly different - his narrator seems eager to give her side of the story yet, despite odd clues about her life and family, remains an elusive figure. Curtis remains the central focus here, but Buckley invites us to question who, if anyone, could give a faithful account of his life, and what it really means to know another human being fully.

This is an engrossing and beguiling read which continuously invites us to read between the lines and consider what we are not being told as much as what we are. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for sending me an ARC to review.

This is written as a monologue told by a gardener at a country residence of a wealthy family, to, what appears to be, a documentary film maker. In a non-linear fashion the narrator describes the goings-on in the family, focusing on Curtis, the patriarch. We examine various events in Curtis's life, starting from his childhood, and ending with his mysterious disappearance, which is where the story culminates (and ends). There is a lot about Curtis's wives, children, and mistresses, and the exploration of their psychology and complex relationships is nuanced and insightful. Beneath the character studies there is also an implied (?) critique of the lives of the hyper wealthy, where, the mundane and absurd collide on a daily basis. It is also a story about storytelling - the main narrator in the story tells stories about people telling and making stories, and the subjectivity of it all reflects on the subjectivity of our own lives.

What I liked most is the analysis of Curtis and how his persona (and personality) evolved over the years to become what they ended up being, and how loneliness and despondence took hold. The weirdness of the relationships around Curtis cannot be ignored either - the absurdity kept threading a fine line between the hilarious and tragic. I actually also liked the form - it felt nice and organic, and somehow avoided the trap of being chaotic and unstructured. A nice story emerged after all, in a somewhat linear fashion, even if the way to get there was not super straight.

What I didn't like about the book was that I somehow couldn't care about any of it. The characters, the events, the story, the disappearance - it was terribly boring and uninvolved. This made me read the book almost by force, and despite its brevity - it felt longer than the average Thomas Mann. While I can't pinpoint what exactly could have made it better, it feels like a shame that such a lovely idea just missed this specific spark.

I could recommend it to literature aficionados, but not to anyone looking for a pleasant and interesting read. It's like a complex piece of modern art - you are happy you saw it, but you're not clear what you took away from it and what it was all about.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

The flowing narrative made me eager to see what it was all about. Maybe I got over eager because I felt rather flat when it ended.

I'm a fan of the show rather than the tell and Buckley really gave us 'Tell' in this one. So maybe I should not be as disappointed as I am. For me the story's 'telling' method did not give intimacy and depth and I couldn't quite grasp what it meant to convey.

*A work of strange and intoxicating immediacy, exploring wealth, the art world, and the intimacy and distance between social classes, Tell is a probing and complex examination of the ways in which we make stories of our own lives and of other people’s.*

I´m afraid I knew nothing about Buckley prior to seeing his name in the latest Fitzcarraldo catalog, but this description got me interested.
The novel´s about an art collector/businessman gone missing. Told by his gardener. In a series of interviews.
„I can talk for as long as you like, no problem. You’ll just have to tell me when to stop. How far back do you want to take it?“

It turns out that pretty soon into the story one starts regarding the main characters, the main narrative as a background one (almost?), and begins wondering about the gardener – the way she´s talking one could hardly doubt she´s telling the truth, but how could she know all these things? And, going deeper and deeper into Doyle´s (the businessman) life she reveals herself as a skillful narrator who enjoys telling a story and plays with its shape – there are jokes, digressions, cliffhangers... She enjoys the control she has - so much so that she tries to control the making of the film as well (that´s what the interviews are for). "It could be a good scene.", she suggests. Or: "If you´re going to have flashbacks, Lily has to be the main one.“

One of the central preoccupations of the novel is memory, remembering. It´s auto-thematized by the narrator herself, making her even more interesting. Much of what she knows comes from the house staff or other people Doyle was in contact with, which means that, in some cases, the story we get has already been filtered thrice. So, just how unreliable is she?
A mystery behind the mystery. Juicy!

Tell is a novel by British author, Jonathan Buckley. Self-made multi-millionaire and art collector, Curtis Doyle has disappeared, the blurb tells us, and we are being told about his life by the gardener on his Scottish estate. It’s a bystander’s perspective, an unfiltered ramble that offers opinions and anecdotes, her own and the hearsay and gossip of others who surrounded the wealthy businessman, describing a generous if somewhat quirky employer.

The gardener lists members of his extended family, friends, business associates, employees, office staff, lovers, an art curator, and a biographer, quite a large cast, and describes their relationships and interactions with the man. From snippets and scant mentions, we learn how Curtis made his fortune, married, fathered two sons, was widowed, had a debilitating accident. We hear a bit about birth parents and foster parents, all of it second- or third-hand.

The reader might wonder, with all the detail the gardener provides, when she actually had time to garden. She often refers to Lara, a journalist writing a memoir about Curtis. Can we rely on her narrative? Is there anyone with whom the reader can connect, about whom the reader might care?

That this is an interview with someone preparing to make a film about Curtis is only mentioned in the last fifteen percent of the tale, while the mystery of his disappearance and unknown fate doesn’t even get a mention until the story is ninety-five percent done.

While the format is a little different, this doesn’t detract, but this novel suffers from a bad case of blurbitis, where the blurb creates expectations in the reader that are either unrealised, or presages an event that, frustratingly for the reader, doesn’t occur until the final pages. Only that it is mercifully short saves it from being a DNF, but readers may still wonder about the point of it.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions.

In Jonathan Buckley's "Tell," a gardener for a wealthy businessman is interviewed about her employer's life and the people (relatives, wives, hangers-ons, staff, etc.) around him. The entire novel is taken up with her monologues about what she remembers, what she knows, what she doesn't know, etc. It's an interesting portrait of how someone concocts a version of someone else's life that benefits them in some way. She does not wan to think ill of her employer. I found it particularly amusing and enlightening that she would become vague about more negative aspects about her employer's life. She would provide details about potential affairs or shady behavior, but she could never bring herself to say anything too negative about her employer Curtis.

I enjoyed this short novel because I was never sure how reliable the gardener is as she tells the story of Curtis and his family. Buckley's brilliance is that readers can assemble their own portraits of these characters that work in direct contrast to the woman's version of people. I was never convinced she was reliable, so I often questioned what she said. In that way, the interviews become a mystery puzzle to solve because readers need to determine just how much they can trust or mistrust the woman's opinions and recitations of events.

The novel is witty and I found it incredibly diverting that the long interview sessions are ostensibly for a film. Buckley again plays with fiction, and how we create stories about the people around us. If there is a small downside to the novel, it’s that the novel is one long monologue broken up into five sessions. It may feel oppressive to some readers that it’s just a monologue with few interruptions (something I find telling and hilarious), but it worked for me. Another winner from Fitzcarraldo Editions.

It was hard not to be completely immersed in this work.
Told through transcripts it often blurred the lines so powerfully I forgot I was reading fiction. Buckley has this ability to give the text such a realistic and engaging voice, it had me completely enraptured by the text, and left me devouring this book.
It was not at all what I was expecting and I loved it for that.
Definitely recommend!

Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy this book. It is set out as a long interview involving an art dealer who has gone missing and the gardener who is being asked about what she knows about what happened. I found the format of it really couldn’t sustain my interest and there was a distinct lack of tension or intrigue to keep me excited in the story. In the end I felt bored and really struggled to reach the end. This was a unique literary experiment but it didn’t pay off for me.

Unfortunately I really struggled to get into this book and had to DNF it after 50%.
Thanks anyways to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

2.5

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this book. It simply wasn't for me.

Told in the form of a rambling, stream of consciousness interview with a gardener employed by a rich man, it tells a sort of story about Curtis who is rich for some reason I cannot recall. There is a large cast list of relatives, lovers/friends and family whose names seem to mainly begin with the same letter/sound - Curtis, Carl, Karolina, Katia...

I admit it, I got hopelessly lost. There was talk about an accident but I couldn't remember if it had actually been mentioned. There was talk about a wife, Lily, but I couldn't recall how she had died. There was talk about fostering and brothers and all sorts of people wandered in and out of the story. However I've still not a single clue what the real point of the book was.

I don't mind a book that goes nowhere but perhaps the format of one, very long, quite dull interview, with no paragraphs or chapters and few breaks simply didn't work for me. I slogged to the end.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo for the advance review copy.

I thoroughly enjoyed Tell. The structure and fantastic storytelling within the book had me entertained from start to finish. Told in one-sided interviews with the gardener of a wealthy businessman who has disappeared, our narrator brings to life the story of her employer, his family, his wealth, and the time building up to his disappearance. Is she entirely reliable? Who knows. I loved that we didn’t get to see the questions she was asked, and to say she was a right gossip is an understatement. I also think this would be an ideal book for someone who loves non-fiction and wants to get into fiction. It felt incredibly believable due to the amount of detail within the pages. I highly recommend this one; it was a delight! I am excited to read anything Buckley releases in the future.

Big thanks to NetGalley & Fitzcarraldo Editions for an ARC of this. Out 28th of March 2024.

This felt so real at points I was convinced it was non-fiction! I love the format and it kept me interested throughout.
This was a very enjoyable read!

Unfortunately this was a DNF for me. I found the characters unlikeable and no one stood out, I didnt enjoy any of the character stories and found I didnt care what happened to them or the story.

Published 28 March. This book didn't really excite me. The idea is that it is a series of interviews with a woman who was employed to be the gardener of a man who has disappeared. We never know the questions that she is being asked, we don't even know who is interviewing her. All we have is her side of the story, her version of events. She tells us about her employer, Curtis. She tells us that he was immensely rich, that he collected art. She tells us about his relationships. But I didn't feel she was reliable. Were the events exactly as she saw them or was she coloring them with her own perceptions. As a gardener, she tells us nothing of the gardens. She doesn't really tell us about these magnificent pieces of art that Curtis collected. The people that she talks about came across - for me - as two-dimensional, there was no flesh on their bones, there was nothing to make me like or dislike them. But that could be the whole idea - that we are left to build our own pictures. This is novel about telling stories, I suppose, and is our gardener telling her version so that she can be the centre of attention rather than Curtis? It wasn't a book with a wow factor, it was ok.

Can definitely imagine someone else liking and enjoying this a whole lot more than I did, but ultimately it wasn't a book for. a reader like me. While I enjoyed some of the sub or minor characters in the novel, the main or more major characters weren't really impressive to me. I also didn't think the plot was very interesting. Nothing much happens. And the style or tone, in my view, did not compensate for the lack of plot. I often enjoy stories without plot for various reasons, but this one didn't work for me. Perhaps I didn't like the tone very much either. But this is a personal preference. Thanks for the ARC anyway.

Framed as a series of interviews in which a gardener narrates the story of the wealthy man she once worked for, Tell is a novel which blurs the lines between object and subject; a tale which asks what it means to be both at the centre of a story and stood watching at the periphery: observing, second-guessing, and recounting an ambiguous version of the truth.

Told mostly in one, relentless stream (albeit broken up with the occasional note from the unnamed interviewer, that the speaker has made a [pause] or said something [indistinct]), Buckley's prose feels so true to life, his ability to embody the voice of his protagonist so vivid and realistic and well-pitched, that half-way through reading I found myself googling the name of the businessman being described, to double-check if this really was a piece of fiction. The transcript form chosen by Buckley added a sinister sense of something clinical and professional - as if the interviewee was telling their story to a detective or an investigative journalist - but the strength of the novel's voice and depth of its characters made me feel immersed throughout, almost as if I was in the room myself.

This was a delightful read - thank you to NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions for the ARC of this book!

Having read various reviews of "Tell" by Jonathan Buckley, I was very keen to read this novel. It was not at all as I had expected. I found the writing style - the direct speech used in the transcripts - quite hard work, although the plot itself was quite gripping.

Felt like I was immersed in a women's mind, reflecting on her insights of other's stories.

How this male author sees life through her eyes & captures her feelings was amazing. Shows how other's can tell stories of others lifes.

Definitely recommend.

Tell is made up entirely of one-sided interview transcripts with a lady who worked as a gardener for a wealthy businessman. As the woman tries to understand her boss and what happened to him, the reader begins to form their own impression of Curtis and the people in his life.

I couldn't resist the idea of a book made mostly of interview transcripts, and this one didn't let me down. Tell is a story about storytelling, featuring a plot that propels the book but also revolves around the title's topic. We don't know what questions are being asked of the narrator, and we only have a hazy picture of who is interrogating her and why. And we never get to hear anyone else's perspective. Tell takes the idea of the untrustworthy narrator - a theme I adore - to new heights, with its reflections on the inaccuracy of memory and how different individuals see the same things. This was one of those books where I found myself rereading particular words and sections because the author brilliantly captured something. And yet, I was completely absorbed in the author's imagined universe, nearly seeing and hearing the narrator thanks to the masterfully written writing style.

Tell is one of my new favorites in the metaliterary genre. Although this book does not claim to be based on true events, the characters and locations are so lifelike that I could easily think it is. Tell lacked that extra wow-factor that makes me want to give a book five stars, but it is a wonderfully intriguing, entertaining, and clever read. I already want to reread it.

Fairly early on in this novel, which is made up of transcripts from a series of interviews with the female gardener who previously worked for a very wealthy businessman, the central figure says: "My mother, she always used to say that you can summarise a person with just one story". As its title suggests, Tell is made up of a whole number of stories, which fail and refuse to summarise its protagonists, not least Curtis, the businessman around which everything revolves. It's a subtle book and your response to it may depend on how patient you are with its subject matter - a depiction of the dysfunctional lives of the very rich. I found the writing more compelling than the subject matter, although it did make me want to seek out other books by Jonathan Buckley. We are gradually schooled to expect the openness of the ending - ends are not fully tied, which I quite liked - but on balance, I was a little underwhelmed by Tell,