Lauren Hopkins's Reviews > The Tell: A Memoir

I'm gonna go three stars I guess. I have some problems with this book largely on how it was presented at a book talk and Q&A with the author I attended, where a bunch of rich white women self-congratulated on being the most important people ever to talk about sexual abuse and how this book will change everyone's lives because the message is about how sharing about abuse is important, as if no one has ever come forward and spoken up about abuse before for this very reason? It was one of the worst displays of self-obsessed privilege I've ever seen and so fucking cringe, especially when after reading the book I found that the author isn't really at all an advocate for survivors in any tangible way? Even the epilogue is like "if you're a survivor and need resources there's some links on my website idk" like could not even be bothered to include any links or organizations or messages of support to survivors in this super triggering book that features graphic descriptions of childhood sexual abuse.

The premise is that the author realizes she was abused as a child after an MDMA-assisted therapy session, so she decides to work on coming to terms with everything she has to go through and process decades later by telling the people in her life. What a horrendous thing to endure and how difficult it must have been to go through recovery from this kind of trauma! Learning about the abuse she had repressed and how she dealt with it at the time also informs the author about so many of her behaviors and personality traits, all of which were formed as kind of subconscious defense mechanisms. These discoveries are fascinating, and how she comes to terms with these traits – and even tries to change many of them in some ways – is powerful.

My feelings about this book are not about her experiences or her story, but more about how kind of insensitive it is to proclaim yourself a martyr for all survivors when really I do not understand where that sense of entitlement is coming from. Literally millions of women have been abused or violated in a similar way and have talked about it for eons. I think it was especially hard to understand having recently read Amanda Nguyen's and Chanel Miller's books, where they – both non-white, non-privileged women – give up careers to fight for justice not only for themselves but as a way to ensure other survivors wouldn't have to suffer in the same way. I'm not saying every survivor needs to do what they did to be heroic, simply getting out of bed and facing each day is fucking heroic for survivors! But this book promoting itself as the most important voice ever in survivorship feels super tone deaf when there are many other experts on this topic who discuss abuse and the aftermath more tactfully, meaningfully, and knowledgeably than this private equity exec who was able to write a book because she's rich and connected, not because she has any qualifications or expertise to responsibly help people. Even her path to getting justice for herself – hiring a corporate lawyer in New York and having them bully her small Texas town's police force into making her decades-old case that has no physical evidence and therefore a very small chance of making it past the investigative stage a priority – is out-of-touch with how 99.9% of the population is equipped to deal with similar situations.

This is her story, so obviously she deserves to share it and obviously her wealth and privilege does not cosmically balance out the trauma she endured. But had this book simply existed SOLELY as a memoir without all of the surrounding pretentious nonsense about how she is single-handedly saving the world, I would've valued it more for what it is – a well-written, introspective, and devastating story about all the ways we suffer from abuse, especially in terms of complicated childhood abuse where memories are unclear or buried entirely, with these cases very rarely tied up with neat little bows in the end. Instead, the insane behavior at the book event and other things the author has said just completely rubbed me the wrong way and unfortunately it affected how I read her story. Is IS an important story to tell and I'm sure it will help survivors come forward and want to talk about their own abuse but it's not groundbreaking or trailblazing in the way it's being heralded, almost entirely by the author herself.

One last thought more about the writing – while I think most of this is really well-written, many of the dialogues read like this woman has never had a conversation with other people before, especially when she speaks with her 11-year-old daughter, who is depicted as a wise old soul who often acts as a therapist and the pillar of emotional support for her mother as she goes through this experience. That's fine, I'm sure it's grounded in truth, but their convos in this book are preposterous, complete with psychobabble lingo and the kind of sage advice a child simply is not equipped to give. It's giving this meme or a Delaney Rowe "precocious child" TikTok and I couldn't stop rolling my eyes.