the tell:

a memoir

A tell is an unconscious reveal given under psychological stress. The poker player who recognizes an opponent’s tell, perhaps the twitch of the eye or the soft intake of breath, is best situated to win the game or, at the least, to mitigate her losses. A tell is also an archaeological mound containing the accumulated remains of human occupation and abandonment over many centuries. And a telltale or tattletale is a child who reports others’ wrongdoings or reveals their secrets.

This memoir is a tell in all of its meanings. It is a compilation of standalone essays that together trace my journey out of the tell my family inhabited and through the restrictive and chauvinistic culture of the forties and fifties, towards emancipation and self-realization.

Thank you for taking this journey with me.
Linda Meyers

the tell, a memoir.

“In this vivid and immensely enjoyable memoir, we encounter the lost world of Jewish Brooklyn, crazy parents, a crazy husband, and a protagonist/narrator who can’t help being a good girl. Woody Allen and Ralph Lauren make appearances: somehow it all fits.”

Philip Lopate, essayist and film critic

Like a psychoanalyst the memoirist seeks to create a coherent narrative out of memories rescued from repression.

Synopsis

Linda I. Meyers was 28 and the mother of three young boys when her mother, after a lifetime of threats, took her own life. Staggered by conflicting feelings of relief and remorse, Meyers believed that the best way to give meaning to her mother’s death was to make changes to her own life. Inspired by the resilience of her immigrant grandmother and bolstered by the Women’s Movement of the seventies, she left her marriage, went to college and received her Psy.D., raised a family, and established a fulfilling career.

Written with irony and humor and sprinkled with Yiddish, The Tell, is one woman’s inspirational story of before and after, and, ultimately, of emancipation and purpose. With stories ranging from witty to heartbreaking, The Tell showcases Meyers’ talent as a gifted storyteller. She chronicles her experience coming of age in a dysfunctional Jewish family during the forties and fifties, her summer romance with a boy who grew up to be fashion designer Ralph Lauren, the rise of feminism, and running a family acting business that led to her son landing a memorable role as young Alvy Singer in Woody Allen’s Academy Award–winning movie Annie Hall.

“Women of any age,” Meyers says, “who’ve struggled to overcome the restrictions of their generation, or the disappointments of their upbringing, will find The Tell to be a funny, touching, and, hopefully, inspiring read.

… a stellar example of how to turn eight decades of life into a taut narrative without filler or digressions.”

Jendi Reiter,
award winning poet and novelist, editor-and-chief of Winning Writers.

Bio


Linda I Meyers is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and writer. She has been published in professional journals and academic books. The Tell is her first published memoir.

Two chapters from The Tell appeared in literary journals: “The Flowers,” a top-five finalist in Alligator Juniper’s annual contest in creative nonfiction, and “The Spring Line,” in Post Road.

Her essay“Woman Looking for Man, Age to Be Determined” was published in the online magazine Manifest-Station. Linda lives and works in New York City and rests and writes in a little town called Chichester in upstate New York. She is currently working on her second memoir. 

Linda Meyer, Author.

…a book about a woman of a certain generation, literary and full of interiority. . .
Read it and be moved.”

Jendi Reiter,
award winning poet and novelist, editor-and-chief of Winning Writers.