Olive Fellows (abookolive)'s Reviews > Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation
Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation
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This was a tough one for me to rate/write about since so much of it is so brilliant, but there was something that didn't work about it - something I couldn't quite put my finger on that kept it from being a shining five star read. Then I watched this online author event and something Krouse said made the lightbulb switch on for me.
But let me back up. This is a memoir that blends the author's professional and personal stories. In the early 2000s, Erika Krouse worked as a private investigator for a law firm gearing up to fight a civil case against a big university. A college student had been blatantly and horrifically sexually assaulted at a party that involved football recruits and the players hosting them ("showing them a good time"). It was widely known this attack happened and nothing was done about it. The players stayed in school, kept playing, and there were no criminal charges. Why? Because that's just how things were done, according to everyone. Football players were campus gods and never had to answer to anyone for anything.
The victim in this case refused to accept this. She contacted an attorney who wanted to go after the university in civil court, claiming a Title IX violation. Any university receiving federal funds needs to ensure that students have equal access to education. The law firm wanted to make the argument that, by, at BEST - ignoring and at WORST - propping up a culture of sexual assault surrounding the football program and then punishing the victims after such attacks occurred, the university was depriving female students of the equal right to an education.
Our author, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse herself, has one of those faces that seems familiar to many people. Complete strangers swear they know her from somewhere and inexplicably begin divulging secrets to her - things they've not even told loved ones. The lawyer taking on the civil case was one of those people when he bumped into Krouse at a book store and after he started spilling his guts to her and she told him that kind of thing happens to her all the time, he offered her a job on the spot.
Krouse's job was to get people involved with this situation to talk to her, find out what secrets were hidden, and help put the pieces of the puzzle together; their collective job was to prove the university knew about this culture of SA and chose to ignore it, likely because they wanted to keep the players on the field and out of a jail cell. Hard to win a football game - those lucrative, brutal spectacles - with your star athletes behind bars.
As our author takes on these interviews and learns how to be a PI by showing up and acting like one, a lot of her past trauma comes bubbling to the surface. During this same time, she met the man who would go on to become her husband and she was also learning how to let go of hope that her own family would, at the very least, acknowledge the abuse she endured.
The beginning sections had me absolutely hooked. Krouse writes with such passion and brings this time to life even though we're almost two decades separated from these events. Her background as a fiction writer and all the observational skills that requires seems to have given her an additional edge as a PI and certainly helped her faithfully tell this riveting story.
But the snag in this book happens when her own story of her fractured relationship with her mother becomes the dominant element. It's here the author lost some (not all) control of the storytelling. While I'm certainly glad she was able to tell her story and communicate how hard of a time she had dealing with her mother, it's very rocky terrain, reading-wise.
In the author talk I referenced at the start of this review, Krouse admits that 1) the first draft of much of what she wrote is what made it into the final book and 2) some people told her to cut some of those family sections but she wanted to leave them in, so she did.
This is where memoir gets tricky. Because yes, it's the author's story and they should be able to tell it the way they want. But also, they're releasing it in a book and asking for money for it. If this were a diary entry, you wouldn't need to consider the reader. But that's not what a memoir is. Had the section about her mother been edited more and had some repetitive parts been removed (I'm talking minor changes overall), it would have felt more balanced with the rest of the book and less like the reader was being asked to be her therapist.
I honestly felt uncomfortable reading those sections - not because of the author's traumas or hard truths, but because it felt like she was so out of control. Not just in the past moments she was writing about, but actually while she was writing it. It felt like it was still raw to her.
This book is 95% perfect. The story is incredible, the work they did was so important, I loved the writing. But I stubbed my toe on that element and it's holding me back from giving this the five stars I really wanted to give it.
Click here to hear more of my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive!
But let me back up. This is a memoir that blends the author's professional and personal stories. In the early 2000s, Erika Krouse worked as a private investigator for a law firm gearing up to fight a civil case against a big university. A college student had been blatantly and horrifically sexually assaulted at a party that involved football recruits and the players hosting them ("showing them a good time"). It was widely known this attack happened and nothing was done about it. The players stayed in school, kept playing, and there were no criminal charges. Why? Because that's just how things were done, according to everyone. Football players were campus gods and never had to answer to anyone for anything.
The victim in this case refused to accept this. She contacted an attorney who wanted to go after the university in civil court, claiming a Title IX violation. Any university receiving federal funds needs to ensure that students have equal access to education. The law firm wanted to make the argument that, by, at BEST - ignoring and at WORST - propping up a culture of sexual assault surrounding the football program and then punishing the victims after such attacks occurred, the university was depriving female students of the equal right to an education.
Our author, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse herself, has one of those faces that seems familiar to many people. Complete strangers swear they know her from somewhere and inexplicably begin divulging secrets to her - things they've not even told loved ones. The lawyer taking on the civil case was one of those people when he bumped into Krouse at a book store and after he started spilling his guts to her and she told him that kind of thing happens to her all the time, he offered her a job on the spot.
Krouse's job was to get people involved with this situation to talk to her, find out what secrets were hidden, and help put the pieces of the puzzle together; their collective job was to prove the university knew about this culture of SA and chose to ignore it, likely because they wanted to keep the players on the field and out of a jail cell. Hard to win a football game - those lucrative, brutal spectacles - with your star athletes behind bars.
As our author takes on these interviews and learns how to be a PI by showing up and acting like one, a lot of her past trauma comes bubbling to the surface. During this same time, she met the man who would go on to become her husband and she was also learning how to let go of hope that her own family would, at the very least, acknowledge the abuse she endured.
The beginning sections had me absolutely hooked. Krouse writes with such passion and brings this time to life even though we're almost two decades separated from these events. Her background as a fiction writer and all the observational skills that requires seems to have given her an additional edge as a PI and certainly helped her faithfully tell this riveting story.
But the snag in this book happens when her own story of her fractured relationship with her mother becomes the dominant element. It's here the author lost some (not all) control of the storytelling. While I'm certainly glad she was able to tell her story and communicate how hard of a time she had dealing with her mother, it's very rocky terrain, reading-wise.
In the author talk I referenced at the start of this review, Krouse admits that 1) the first draft of much of what she wrote is what made it into the final book and 2) some people told her to cut some of those family sections but she wanted to leave them in, so she did.
This is where memoir gets tricky. Because yes, it's the author's story and they should be able to tell it the way they want. But also, they're releasing it in a book and asking for money for it. If this were a diary entry, you wouldn't need to consider the reader. But that's not what a memoir is. Had the section about her mother been edited more and had some repetitive parts been removed (I'm talking minor changes overall), it would have felt more balanced with the rest of the book and less like the reader was being asked to be her therapist.
I honestly felt uncomfortable reading those sections - not because of the author's traumas or hard truths, but because it felt like she was so out of control. Not just in the past moments she was writing about, but actually while she was writing it. It felt like it was still raw to her.
This book is 95% perfect. The story is incredible, the work they did was so important, I loved the writing. But I stubbed my toe on that element and it's holding me back from giving this the five stars I really wanted to give it.
Click here to hear more of my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive!
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May 09, 2022 08:19PM
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