"Tell Me Who We Were"

“Tell Me Who We Were”

Written by Kate McQuade

Review written by Diana Iozzia

Personally, I found myself very confused by this novel. First and foremost, the description tells us that this book is about a young group of female friends at a boarding school. They have an obsession with a handsome, young romantic language professor. Then, he mysteriously is found naked and dead at the bottom of a local swimming pond. So, how did this happen? Why? Well, we are invited to look further and read about the girls as they grow up and where they go from there. The story is told in short stories but they still surround the characters we were introduced to.

I found this book to be nothing like I expected. In the most unfortunate way possible, I felt that the story of the death at the boarding school was a catalyst but not a strong influence on the girls’ lives. They were deeply upset as teens, but the rest of their lives don’t seem to connect for me. I would have thought that each girl would have a different or similar reaction to Mr. Arcilla’s death, but the future perspectives felt insignificant, as if I was reading a completely different book.

We know very little about each girl, just a few short descriptors and the tiniest amount of information to separate them from each other. Still, I had to take notes, because they didn’t really seem like clear and constructed characters. I can suspend a little disbelief, because this book seems as it was written as an ethereal, strange story, but I felt like I just missed every point. I read others’ reviews and think, “I really don’t understand how they came to this conclusion”. The prose and dialogue are interesting, but I still can’t grasp the connections and construct this in my mind. We have characters when they’re young. Then, they’re older. Only one character, Lilith, truly sticks out as a fleshed-out, well-described, and interesting character. She seems to be the only girl who was deeply affected by Mr. Arcilla. She’s the only one with interesting actions, motivation, and anything really. The other girls: Evie, Claire, Romy (who’s kind of interesting), Nellie, and Grace have stories about them that could have been written into many different types of stories.

From the initial description and the positive reviews, I was expecting this book to be similar to “Lolita”, “The Virgin Suicides”, and maybe even “The Life and Death of Sophie Stark”, which is another strange and odd story with young girls going from adolescence throughout their lives. In addition, the shifting perspective and narrative style was jarring. Sometimes, we heard about every girl but in a second person style, then a third person about some of the girls, and then a first person and more. It was just disconnecting.

There was very little I actually enjoyed about this book. Well, Lilith and the lyrical, pretty prose. I was hoping for an introspective, wise novel about young girls and the influence of a tragic event. I didn’t receive that. I read in the author’s notes that many of the short stories were inspired by myths, parables, and fables, but since I was not familiar with any of them or could understand the influence, the book felt completely disjointed and unappealing. I was severely let down by this book, and I cannot recommend it. I gave this book a rating of 2 out of 5 stars.

I received an advance reader’s edition of this novel from the publisher. Thank you to William Morrow for the opportunity.