2 out of 5

This is a story about a woman who has survived an abusive relationship and the subversive means by which she deals with that history as well as her disconnect from her small social circle.  Pardon the pedantic description, but ‘Tell Us You Were Here’ reads a bit like a writing assignment, which I’m sure is a horrible criticism to hear regarding a work that was certainly patiently concocted and written, but nonetheless.  Our narrator and Tessa and Alice are ghost hunting for Patience, a spirit who wrote through the medium of Pearl, an evocative symbol of control and removal for the storyteller, who doesn’t really believe in all the ghost mumbo jumbo, told to us again and again… which is a dead giveaway for an event that occurs within the last pages.  She reeks of outline: create a character, now show them to us, don’t tell; and so Valente dances through the house in which this hunt is taking place, skipping in and out of details about her character, filling in the gaps.  Tessa and Alice feel simply like extras to motivate the story, their roles (at least to me) easily confused and their purpose beyond placeholders not really established.

Most of the One Storys I’ve read are, truly, mini-novels.  They take advantage of the short format for pacing or subtlety that can be taxing at full length, but they do so and give you the sense of experiencing a full tale.  ‘Tell Us,’ on the other hand, feels like an isolated point: an assignment regarding a subtle character study, perhaps.  There’s nothing poor about the writing itself, it just doesn’t feel particularly inspired and doesn’t make much of an impression after the turn of the page.  (Yes, irony, given the title.)