Tell-All

by Chuck Palahniuk

"Tell-All" is many things: a Sunset Boulevard-inflected homage to Old Hollywood when grand dames like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost. It is a Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama full of big gestures and muted psychic torment. It is a veritable Tourette's Syndrome of rat-tat-tat name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list. It is a merciless send-up of Lillian Hellman's habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond. Our narrator is Hazie Coogan, who for decades has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine 'Miss Kathie' Kenton, a star of the wattage of Elizabeth Taylor and the emotional torments of Judy Garland. The survivor of multiple marriages, career comebacks and cosmetic surgeries, Miss Kathie lives the way legends should. But danger lurks when gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III arrives and worms his way into Miss Kathie's heart and boudoir.
Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written his celebrity tell-all memoir and that it foretells her death in a forthcoming Lillian Hellman-penned World War II musical extravaganza "Unconditional Surrender", in which Miss Kathie portrays Lily defeating Japanese forces from Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki. As the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans - and for posterity. A dark reimagining of "All About Eve" and an hilarious assault on celebrity, "Tell-All" is vintage Palahniuk.

• ISBN10: 0385526350
• ISBN13: 9780385526357
• Publish Date: 4 May 2010 (first published 1 January 2010)
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Doubleday Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 192
• Language: English

Reviews

[lisacee]

I wanted to like this book, but it may be my least favorite Palahnuik book that I've read.

The cover, both front and back, are what really piqued my attention when I saw this in the bookstore (though, I got my copy from the library). Beautiful cover design with glitter detail and the back cover with the anonymous quote of "Every word he writes about me is a lie, including "and" and "the." (I don't have the book in front of me to get the exact quote, but you get the idea.)

I just never got into this book. I understand what Palahnuik was trying to get at with the bold-type on all of the celebrity names and brands, but that sort of thing is just not my scene and maybe it's my fault for thinking that he could make it something that interested me.

The worst thing I can say about this book is that I guessed the twist early on. (It's not a spoiler to say that a Palahnuik book has a twist, is it?) I have only ever guessed the twist in one other of his books (Invisible Monsters) but that was much closer to the reveal and I cared so much about the characters that it excited me. Here it just seemed predictable.

Cult members, as Palahnuik fans call themselves, will surely love this book and call my review blasphemy but Tell All just didn't move me like his previous books. Palahnuik is excellent at writing books with highly unlikable characters and plots like a train wreck where you just can't look away, but this book failed to get any emotional response from me except maybe boredom.