Last week, news broke that Amy Griffin, author of the 2025 New York Times bestselling memoir "The Tell," had filed a lawsuit against the anonymous former classmate who, last March, sued Griffin, alleging that several of the anecdotes in the book — which details a horrific experience of childhood rape and ****** ual abuse — were not Griffin's, but her own. Griffin's countersuit claims that the classmate's lawsuit characterizes her as "a fraud and a thief." This isn't the kind of delicious, schadenfreude-dipped publishing-world drama about a bad art friend that other writers love to deconstruct in group texts. It's a dispiriting legal battle in which two women who likely suffered profound ****** ual trauma are publicly battling, one with a focus on preserving both her reputation and her business interests, and the other with almost nothing on her side, including, thanks to Griffin's countersuit, anonymity.
"The Tell" is about a woman who is by every possible measure successful, trying to understand what unseen force is holding her apart from an otherwise beautiful life — impacting her marriage, alienating her children and causing panic attacks. On the encouragement of her equally successful, equally blessed husband, Griffin agrees to try therapeutic MDMA. A former star student and long-distance runner from a prominent family in Amarillo, Texas, Griffin goes into her first session with a competitor's single-minded determination to, as she writes, "get to the finish line."
It takes almost no time for the drug to unearth memories of habitual ****** ual abuse by a teacher at her middle school that began when Griffin was 12 and continued until she was 16. Her confidence in the memories she recovers ("My body knew what had happened to me. The way I'd shake when I'd tell my story; the way my eyes welled up with tears at the mention of Texas") sets her on a relentless trajectory of seeking legal and emotional redress.
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I listened to "The Tell" on audiobook knowing very little about it. I didn't know that Griffin is married to a billionaire former hedge-fund founder, or that she's on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Board of Trustees, or that her own venture-capital firm, G9, has made her a billionaire in her own right. I didn't see the seals of approval from America's trio of book-club heavies — Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Jenna Bush Hager — on its cover. I didn't read the glowing blurbs for a first-time author from Gwyneth Paltrow, Gloria Steinem, Chanel Miller and Mariska Hargitay. I didn't know that the book wasn't written so much as it was built by a prominent ghostwriter, a cadre of well-placed friends and colleagues, and a publishing industry that's made billions of dollars from trauma memoirs by women.
"The Tell" is about a woman who is by every possible measure successful, trying to understand what unseen force is holding her apart from an otherwise beautiful life — impacting her marriage, alienating her children and causing panic attacks. On the encouragement of her equally successful, equally blessed husband, Griffin agrees to try therapeutic MDMA. A former star student and long-distance runner from a prominent family in Amarillo, Texas, Griffin goes into her first session with a competitor's single-minded determination to, as she writes, "get to the finish line."
It takes almost no time for the drug to unearth memories of habitual ****** ual abuse by a teacher at her middle school that began when Griffin was 12 and continued until she was 16. Her confidence in the memories she recovers ("My body knew what had happened to me. The way I'd shake when I'd tell my story; the way my eyes welled up with tears at the mention of Texas") sets her on a relentless trajectory of seeking legal and emotional redress.
Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last.
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I listened to "The Tell" on audiobook knowing very little about it. I didn't know that Griffin is married to a billionaire former hedge-fund founder, or that she's on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Board of Trustees, or that her own venture-capital firm, G9, has made her a billionaire in her own right. I didn't see the seals of approval from America's trio of book-club heavies — Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Jenna Bush Hager — on its cover. I didn't read the glowing blurbs for a first-time author from Gwyneth Paltrow, Gloria Steinem, Chanel Miller and Mariska Hargitay. I didn't know that the book wasn't written so much as it was built by a prominent ghostwriter, a cadre of well-placed friends and colleagues, and a publishing industry that's made billions of dollars from trauma memoirs by women.
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