TELL

This is a companion to her internationally bestselling novel Deafening, but it also stands alone as an exceptional work by a prodigious author at the top of her game. Tell is a tour de force about the aftermath of the First World War – an extraordinary novel of secrets withheld, and secrets revealed. In 1919, only months after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the men and women of the Canadian town of Deseronto struggle to recover from wounds, both visible and hidden. Kenan, a young soldier who has returned from the war shell-shocked and disfigured, confines himself to his small house on the Bay of Quinte, venturing outside only under the cover of night. His wife, Tress, attempting to adjust to the trauma that has overwhelmed her husband and altered their marriage, seeks advice from her Aunt Maggie. But Maggie and her husband Am, who cares for the town clock tower, have sorrows of their own, and heartbreaks that lie unacknowledged between them. While Am's unease increases, Maggie finds joy in her friendship with Zel, an independent and eccentric widow who runs the local boarding house, and in the Choral Society started by Lukas, an enigmatic musician who has arrived in town from an unspoken part of war-torn Europe. Am, troubled by the widening gulf in his marriage, visits Kenan weekly, though the two often sit in silence. Kenan begins to make forays after dark, onto the newly frozen bay where he skated as a boy. Maggie does her best to counsel Tress, but spends much of her time at Zel's boarding house, rehearsing for the upcoming New Year's Eve concert. While reconnecting with the music of her past, and influenced by a chance meeting with the great diva, Nellie Melba, Maggie rediscovers a part of herself that had long ago been set aside. As the decade draws to a close, the lives of these characters become more and more entwined and startling revelations surface as layers of silence begin to crumble. Tell is a deeply moving, emotionally rich story about the burdens of the past. Told with Frances Itani's trademark narrative power and grace, it is a beautifully rendered reminder that the secrets we bury to protect ourselves can also be the cause of our undoing. Each of us must decide what to share and what to hide, and how our actions will lead us into the future. Tell is a stunning achievement. FRANCES ITANI is the author of several novels including Requiem, chosen by The Washington Post as one of 2012's top fiction titles of the year; and the number one bestseller Deafening, which won a Commonwealth Writers' Prize, was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was published in seventeen territories. Grove/Atlantic have acquired the US rights, and are looking to publish in early 2015.