🖋 Book Review: This Telling by Cheryl Strayed (Kindle Edition, Out of Line Collection)
A poignant, tightly written short story about truth, memory, and the stories we tell ourselves—Cheryl Strayed distills decades of emotion into just a few dozen pages, leaving a lasting ache.
🧠 Overview
First published on September 1, 2020 as part of Amazon Original Stories’ Out of Line collection, This Telling is a 37-page work of literary fiction narrated in Strayed’s signature intimate, empathetic style.
The story follows Geraldine Waters, who, as a teenager in 1964, was sent by her parents to an unwed mothers’ home, where she gave birth and surrendered her baby for adoption. For decades, she’s lived with an “alternative narrative” of her life—one she’s told to others and perhaps to herself.
When a genealogy test decades later reopens that sealed chapter, Geraldine is forced to reconcile the truth she’s hidden with the life she’s built, confronting grief she’s never fully allowed herself to feel.
✨ Key Themes & Highlights
- 👩👧 Motherhood & loss – The enduring emotional impact of giving up a child.
- 🕰 The weight of secrets – How untold truths shape identity and relationships.
- 📜 Societal pressures – A vivid portrayal of the stigma faced by unwed mothers in the 1960s.
- 🧠 Memory & narrative – The tension between the life lived and the life told.
- ✍️ Strayed’s style – Lyrical, compassionate, and unflinching in emotional honesty.
“A genealogy test sparks a woman’s reflection on the two accounts of her life—the real one and the one she’s always told the world”
💬 Reader Reception
- ⭐ Goodreads rating: ~3.95/5 from over 7,600 ratings
- 📖 Praised for being emotionally resonant and beautifully written, packing depth into a short format.
- 🧾 Some readers wished for a longer exploration of Geraldine’s life, feeling the ending came too soon—but many agree the brevity adds to its bittersweet impact.
⚠️ Considerations
- 📄 Short format – Best approached as a character snapshot rather than a full novel.
- 📚 Part of a themed collection – Works as a standalone, but shares Out of Line’s focus on women’s empowerment and escape.
- 🧠 Emotional weight – Deals with adoption, loss, and regret; may be triggering for some readers.
🏁 Final Verdict
This Telling is a quietly powerful short story that lingers long after the last page. Strayed captures the ache of unspoken truths and the courage it takes to face them, making it a moving addition to the Out of Line collection and a must-read for fans of character-driven literary fiction.
