The Tell by Amy Griffin

The Tell by Amy Griffin

288 pages

Published March 2025 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

For decades, Amy ran. Through the dirt roads of Amarillo, Texas, where she grew up; to the campus of the University of Virginia, as a student athlete; on the streets of New York, where she built her adult life; through marriage, motherhood, and a thriving career. To outsiders, it all looked, in many ways, perfect. But Amy was running from something—a secret she was keeping not only from her family and friends, but unconsciously from herself. “You’re here, but you’re not here,” her daughter said to her one night. “Where are you, Mom?” So began Amy’s quest to solve a mystery trapped in the deep recesses of her own memory—a journey that would take her into the burgeoning field of psychedelic therapy, to the limits of the judicial system, and ultimately, home to the Texas panhandle, where her story began.

In her search for the truth, to understand and begin to recover from buried childhood trauma, Griffin interrogates the pursuit of perfectionism, control, and maintaining appearances that drives so many women, asking, when, in our path from girlhood to womanhood, did we learn to look outside ourselves for validation? What kind of freedom is possible if we accept the whole story and embrace who we really are? With hope, heart, and relentless honesty, she points a way forward for all of us, revealing the power of radical truth-telling to deepen our connections—with others and ourselves.

My Thoughts:

Yikes - I just realized that I'd started this review more than a week ago, left it open when I went off to switch laundry (or whatever it was that I went off to do) and never came back to it. So I'm going to make this quick. 

• Read about this one in the New York Times book section...I think. I doubt it appealed to me because of the Oprah label - I tend to steer away from that label after years of reading her selections that depressed me.
• Of course, you will have a pretty good idea of what happened to Amy almost from the start. It's more a matter of who did it, than whether or not it happened. But what always amazes me is the people can bury something like this so deeply that they forget it even happened. 
• Have you ever heard of someone using MDMA for therapy? It was legal when Griffin used it but it's a godsend that she discovered it, even if it meant a lot of pain and years of learning to deal with what happened to her. She finally understood why she couldn't stop running, both literally and figuratively. Finding out allowed her to finally heal other relationships as well. 
• It's a tough read, but uplifting to know that there's hope for healing. For Griffin, at least, her life would never have been as complete had she not been able to face what happened and heal. 
• There were parts where I felt that it got a little repetitive. Although it's not a long book, I still felt it would have benefitted from more editing. 
• As ever, when it comes to situations like what happened to Griffin, our judicial system and our patriarchal system made me so angry. For her and for all of the other women who suffered at this person's hands and for all of the other women who suffer at the hands of abusers, especially the young girls.