The Tell by Hester Kaplan: A Haunting Novel of Love
and Marriage
Hester Kaplan is an award-winning writer whose short story
collection The Edge of Marriage won
the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her new novel, The Tell, about a young childless
couple living in Providence and the troubles simmering just below the surface
of their marriage, is on sale now. Caroline
Leavitt, author of Pictures of You,
says, “It’s hard not to use the word genius” aboutThe Tell, and Booklist
says it’s “highly recommended for readers who enjoy the psychologically complex
work of Annie Proulx or Stewart O’Nan.”
Read tadalafil neuropathy on for an essay from
Hester about marriage, gambling,
and writing, and make sure to check out the discussion
questions for book clubs. Look for The Tell wherever books are sold!
Inside The Tell by Hester Kaplan
Over the past decade, I managed to find myself (as though by
accident) in a few casinos, both the enormous, glitzy ones and the sad,
down-on-their-luck ones. It’s not because I enjoy gambling. In fact, I dislike
it for the same reason some people love it: the excitement of risk. But there I
was, wandering the floor, watching people at the tables, https://www.acheterviagrafr24.com/viagra-online/ listening to the
chiming of the machines and the sound of metallic rain as someone won at slots.
I was especially drawn to those people playing the slots hour after hour, and
wondered what enticed them and kept them there through their wins and despite
their losses. I’ll admit that playing the slot machines can be thrilling for a
moment, but for me, it’s not a good kind of thrill. It’s like standing at the
edge of a chasm, looking down and realizing that it wouldn’t be so hard to
fall.
I studied anthropology in https://www.acheterviagrafr24.com/sildenafil-naturel-xtd/ college. I was in awe of Claude
Lévi-Strauss. I heatedly discussed structuralism and Tristes Tropiques. I
devoured Yanomamo: The Fierce People, a case study in cultural anthropology, as
though it were a novel, and gobbled up other ethnographies. But I knew I was
never going to be an anthropologist because my interests weren’t scholarly.
What interested me was more social, more personal, maybe more intimate: how
people interacted; what happened when they strayed outside the norm and broke
their contracts; how they understood, misunderstood, and formed their relationships
with others. How a particular arrangement, formal and informal, small and
large, functioned, and how it was different from any other. I also realized that
my study didn’t have to be of the Yanomano or the Dinka of Sudan; it could be
of the people around me—family, friends, strangers on the subway, a boyfriend’s
parents, teachers, the women on my basketball team. Married couples. And,
later, casino goers.
Casinos have their own particular culture. And for the women
who play the slot machines—the majority of women who go to casinos choose the slots
as their primary game—there is an inviting dynamic at work. Many women prefer
the slots https://www.acheterviagrafr24.com/viagra-definition/ to table games because it allows them to be alone, to think or
meditate, to go at their own speed without criticism or hassle. In The Tell, I wrote about Mira,
a woman I
thought I might know and admire in real life, and then I put her in front of a slot
machine. I wanted to find out what would keep her going back to the slots, how
she might get into money trouble, how she might hide the truth from her husband,
Owen. Many of the women I talked to in researching the novel began playing the
slots because it was fun, a way to release stress, an easy night out. For
others, playing the slots blanketed their grief or offered addiction’s instant
gratification. Like so many of these women, Mira never imagined she was going
to become a compulsive gambler or lose
control of her life. She could not
imagine how it could happen to a woman like her. Compulsive gambling can be
devastating in any number of ways, and in The
Tell, I wanted to know how it might test a marriage.
Every marriage is different, and The Tell looks at a single one. Mira’s addiction, with its lies,
betrayals, and secrets, threatens to destroy her marriage, which is built on
the opposite notions of trust and honesty. Marriage is sometimes the context in
which life happens; sometimes, as in this novel, it is the story itself. Marriage
takes place within a room—and in The Tell,
a large house of many rooms—a reminder of constancy, even as the marriage
changes. As Owen deals with the damage Mira has done, their house, filled with
a conflation of memories and responsibilities, holds and confuses him. Wilton,
the seductive and ruthless new neighbor, wants what he thinks exists between
Owen and Mira, but he can’t ever really know what this marriage, or any other,
is truly like as long as he’s on the outside of it. Writing, like marriage and
gambling, can also be a thrilling risk. Are you willing to see how far you can
lean over that chasm?
Read an excerpt
of The Tell, check out the reading
group guide, and become a fan of Hester Kaplan on Facebook.