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Tell Everything Deserves Giller Prize Attention: The Sun Times

The 15th annual Giller Prize is still seven months away but the publishing industry is already buzzing and making lists after the jury panel of Margaret Atwood, Bob Rae, and Colm Toibin was announced on March 31st.  This past weekend (April 19th) Andrew Armitage of The Sun Times shone the spotlight on three books, including Dundurn’s Tell Everything by Sally Cooper, that he thinks deserves more attention in a field that’s wide open. Here’s what he had to say about Sally Cooper and her second novel Tell Everything.

“… once readers get past the resemblance of the plot of [Tell Everything] to the infamous Bernado case, they will find a work of fiction that while unsettling, shows the powers of an emerging writer with uncanny skills in crafting dialogue, plot and prose.

Pauline, who lives with her partner, Alex, has a closet full of secrets. Ramona, a friend from her teen years, has been charged with murdering her husband James. When the news reaches Pauline, she realizes that her life is just about to be turned upside down. Police investigators discover that Ramona and James had been sexually abusing young women lured into their home.

Was Pauline one of them? Or were the scripts written by her for make-believe sessions with Ramona and James merely innocent imaginary fun? What will happen to her life and Alex once she is forced to testify in a courtroom? Maybe it is all a bad dream, a slice of her life best forgotten but now revealed in a sensational case where her past life is under the microscope.

Tell Everything is certainly unsettling but one of the tasks of good literature is to disturb, to make the reader think for themselves, to act as a jury member deciding the value of a book. Sally Cooper has achieved all that – and more.”
- Andrew Armitage, The Sun Times, April 19, 2008

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About the author

Erin is a publicist for Dundurn Press. She reads a wide variety of books (maybe even too many!) and wields a vast amount of positively optimistic power over what should and shouldn't be done in the universe.