Jonathan Buckley, Tell

 

- British author Jonathan Buckley's latest novel Tell, published recently in Australia by Giramondo, is an entrancing tale of personality, family and friends. It was a joint winner of the 2022 The Novel Prize, a global biennial award for literary fiction written in English. 

- What makes the novel such a pleasure to read is the voice of the narrator. An unnamed woman, who has long worked as a gardener on a wealthy man's estate, is telling an unnamed listener the story of the man and his family and close friends. 

- Apart from their wealth, the family is fairly ordinary. The man is a very successful clothing entrepreneur and art collector who adored his wife, now deceased. They had three children and daughters-in-law, some talented some not, some good some not so good. 

 

- The unnamed woman is a wonderful story teller. She's definitely a ‘talker’, thoroughly enjoying this opportunity to give her views. They're detailed, insightful and earthy. She’s almost omniscient. She refers constantly to Harry, the maintenance man on the estate, who is a mate and obviously also an acute observer. Ordinary folk are telling the tale. 'You know what I mean?'.

- The head of the clan, Curtis, had various female friends after his wife's death, some intimate, some not. Lara, a journalist and author, was very close. She was working on a biography of him. He was an abandoned baby who grew up in foster care passed on from various couples.  

- Gradually, as we learn more about all the characters involved in this tale, we become aware of the various ways personalities are created. There's truth and falsity, self-awareness and pretence, comfort and anxiety, pain and drugs. 

- Curtis tells a story at the end of the narration that sticks. A young Jewish nurse, Lea, and a German law student, Adrian, fell in love but were separated before the war. Accidentally they found each other 50 years later. 

- Our narrator insists: ‘No one could take the place of Lily’. 

- I absolutely loved this brilliant novel and its brilliant narrator. That voice!