Tell Me Who We Were, Kate McQuade
Tell Me Who We Were, Kate McQuade
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Tell Me Who We Were
Stories

Author: Kate McQuade

Narrator: Sarah Naughton, Sophie Amoss, Allyson Ryan, Amy Landon, Gabra Zackman, Caitlin Davies, Hillary Huber

Unabridged: 7 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 07/02/2019


Synopsis

Infused with the keen insight of Joyce Carol Oates and haunting power of Kelly Link, a radiant collection of linked stories that explore the vulnerability, resilience, and hidden desires of women, following six girls over the course of sixty years, from their first semester at boarding school to the twilight of their lives.

It begins with a drowning. One day Mr. Arcilla, the romance language teacher at Briarfield, an all-girls boarding school, is found dead at the bottom of Reed Pond. Young and handsome, the object of much fantasy and fascination, he was adored by his students. For Lilith and Romy, Evie and Claire, Nellie and Grace, he was their first love, and their first true loss.In this extraordinary collection, Kate McQuade explores the ripple effect of one transformative moment on six lives, witnessed at a different point in each girl’s future. Throughout these stories, these bright, imaginative, and ambitious girls mature into women, lose touch and call in favors, achieve success and endure betrayal, marry and divorce, have children and struggle with infertility, abandon husbands and remain loyal to the end.Lyrical, intimate, and incisive, Tell Me Who We Were explores the inner worlds of girls and women, the relationships we cherish and betray, and the transformations we undergo in the simple act of living.

About Kate McQuade

Kate McQuade is the author of the novel Two Harbors. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Harvard Review, Shenandoah, and Verse Daily, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Lily for Washington Post, LitHub, and TIME Magazine. She is the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the MacDowell Colony, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Women’s International Study Center, and Yaddo. Born and raised in Minnesota, she teaches at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where she lives on campus with her family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Marjorie on June 01, 2019

Mr. Arcilla, a language teacher at an all-girls boarding school, has drowned and it has sent his young students spinning. Lilith, Claire, Romy, Grace, Evie and Nellie struggle to find understanding of this loss as Mr. Arcilla was their first true love. They learn that Mr. Arcilla was nude when he wa......more

Goodreads review by Sue on June 29, 2019

"Mr. Arcilla died. . . Handsome and scruffy and achingly tall. . .He was just out of college. . . to teach twelve-year-old boarding school girls the fundamentals of Spanish and French. . . Spanish then French. . . He never made it to French. . ." Six twelve-year-old boarding school girls at the preci......more

Goodreads review by Jamie on August 26, 2019

{Thank you William Morrow for the finished copy of Tell Me Who We Were.} Trigger Warnings: Infertility, Miscarriage, Self Harm, Postpartum, Cancer, Suicide Attempt The death of a beloved male teacher at a girl's boarding school sets in motion the lives of the girls who held him on a pedestal. In short......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on June 29, 2019

Well this is a great book with lots of insight and beautiful prose and yet it's just not for me. So I gave it four stars because I know it's well written. Seeing things exclusively from the standpoint of a younger person just isn't working for me at this point in my life. I need the adult perspectiv......more

Goodreads review by Suzanne on July 16, 2019

Author Kate McQuade has written a series of short stories that center around a clique of girls, students who attend a school where a male teacher has been found dead. This teacher was unmarried, young and excitingly appealing to the students. To add to the excitement of his death, he is also found n......more