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. A Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama full of big gestures and muted psychic torment. A veritable Tourette's Syndrome of rat-tat-tat name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list. A merciless send-up of 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.
Industry Reviews
Blackly hilarious...full of brilliantly acid one-liners...a gripping, outrageous and stylishly written hoot * News Of The World *
Chuck turns his gimlet and razor sharp pen on celebrity, with a darkly sparkling tale inspired by the classic All About Eve -- Lauren Laverne * Grazia *
Palahniuk remains a cutting stylist who knows how to toss a well-aimed barb * Daily Telegraph *
With his love of contemporary fairy tales that are gritty and dirty rather than pretty, Palahniuk is the likeliest inheritor of Vonnegut's place in American writing * San Francisco Chronicle *
Chuck Palahniuk is one of modern American fiction's most interesting stylists, and he's at it again... A masterful feat * Associated Press *