Tell

Starred review from January 22, 2024
This mesmerizing page-turner from Buckley (Live; Live; Live) takes the form of a transcribed interview with a woman employed as a gardener for a fabulously wealthy self-made Englishman who might be dead. The form, which has the feel of a talking head interview for a documentary but isn’t explicitly framed, creates instant suspense, and the dramatic opening—“Shall we start with the crash? Seems an obvious place,” says the unnamed interview subject—draws readers quickly into the story of her employer, Curtis, the founder of a high-end retail chain. Key elements of that life story include a difficult upbringing in various foster homes in England’s gloomy Midlands and complicated romantic entanglements (be it his sincere attachment to his late wife who died young or his long-running affair with a Swiss art buyer whose pretensions the gardener hilariously satirizes). The gardener also lays bare the wastrel tendencies of Curtis’s children in anecdotes about their drug abuse and bitcoin investments. As Buckley gradually winds toward the details of the aforementioned crash, which took place while Curtis was in Cambodia on business, he asks readers to think about how and why stories are told. This self-reflexivity results in a thought-provoking, artfully constructed narrative enriched by the mysteries that expand and proliferate throughout. It’s a deliciously fraught tour de force.