Tell Me One Thing

Name: Tell Me One Thing
Brand: Tantor Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Kerri Schlottman
ISBN: 9798350837360

Author: Kerri Schlottman

Narrator: Jillian Yetter

Unabridged: 8 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/27/2024

Categories: Fiction, City Life, Coming Of Age, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Outside a rural Pennsylvania motel, nine-year-old Lulu smokes a cigarette while sitting on the lap of a trucker. Recent art grad Quinn is passing through town and captures it. The photograph, later titled "Lulu & the Trucker," launches Quinn's career, escalating her from a starving artist to a renowned photographer. In a parallel life, Lulu fights to survive a volatile home, growing up too quickly in an environment wrought with drug abuse and her mother's prostitution. Decades later, when Quinn has a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art and "Lulu & the Trucker" has sold at auction for a record-breaking amount, Lulu is surprised to find the troubling image of her young self in the newspaper. She attends an artist talk for the exhibition with one question in mind for Quinn: Why didn't you help me all those years ago? Tell Me One Thing is a portrait of two Americas, examining power, privilege, and the sacrifices one is willing to make to succeed. Traveling through the 1980s to present day, it delves into New York City's free-for-all grittiness while exposing a neglected slice of the struggling rust belt.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Megan on January 08, 2023

This was an unexpectedly wonderful book for me. Unexpected because it hasn’t had all the press and accolades; I heard about it due to an author event my bookstore is hosting next month. It’s a short book, only about 200 pages, but it packs a lot of character development and emotion into those pages.......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on November 21, 2022

This story follows two lives, one of the photographer and the other, the photographed. It's told with raw and honest prose and alternating distinctly contrasting voices. There is an amazing cast of supporting characters I felt such empathy for. The reader steps into the glamor of 80s photography in......more

Goodreads review by Melissa on January 02, 2023

TELL ME ONE THING is a beautiful story about some not so beautiful things related to class, power, and privilege. I finished this book last night and am still thinking about the characters. I found myself empathizing with the main characters just much as the supporting characters. I’m still thinking......more

Goodreads review by Rhiannon on January 21, 2023

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I've already started my Best Books of 2023 list because of this book. Clocking in at just 216 pages, Tell Me One Thing circles around a single Polaroid photo taken in 1980 and spans the years between its creation and......more

Goodreads review by Marjorie on February 16, 2023

Schlottman skillfully sets the hard core world of a struggling photographer artist against the world of one of her subjects, a random young girl who is clearly in a bad situation. By placing their lives in parallel storylines the author breaks a boundary, which all great art does, lifting up its hea......more