The Tell: A Memoir

Griffin's memoir arrived as an Oprah's Book Club pick built around a dramatic premise: MDMA-assisted therapy surfacing repressed memories of abuse by a middle-school teacher. It was read, initially, as a raw and specific account of trauma recovered rather than invented. That reading collapsed after a New York Times investigation combed Griffin's Amarillo yearbook and hometown for corroboration and instead found a former classmate who says her own abuse story was appropriated; both women have since sued each other. Whatever the legal outcome, the episode has retroactively reframed the book itself — what looked like unusually granular memoir now reads, to many who followed the reporting, as a cautionary case study in how therapeutic narrative and factual reconstruction can pull apart under scrutiny.