Tell — Jonathan Buckley

Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, Tell is an exuberant, intensely fluid, and probing examination of the ways in which we make stories of our own and of other people's lives

A novel of intense, flickering intelligence, Tell is structured as a series of interviews with a woman who worked as a gardener for a wealthy businessman and art collector who has mysteriously disappeared, and may or may not have committed suicide. What might be a gloomy subject is instead alluring, lit from within by a lively deep knowledge of human nature: Buckley's eye for motivations brings to mind a Thomas Hardy for our atomized 21st-century. A thrilling novel of strange, intoxicating immediacy, Tell carries the pleasures of exciting new gossip enjoyed with a rare old cognac by a crackling fire. 

Calling his work “captivating,” John Banville has asked: “Why isn't Jonathan Buckley better known?”