I finished Let Me Tell You/ Let Me Go On sitting on a plane from Los Angeles to Chicago. I started it on my way to the city of stars, and between the two four-hour flights I completed my reading of these two novels-in-conversation. Since that time has passed, I have (to what I’m sure is the dismay of my editor) waited to start this review, despite thinking about this book every single day, because I have felt unsure how to put into words how incredible this book was. I’ve decided my vocabulary isn’t going to suddenly expand anytime soon, so bear with me while I give it my best shot.
I should start by saying I selected this book to review because I doubted Paul Griffiths’s ability to rise to the Herculean task of telling this story—or at the very least needed to see it for myself. These two novels give a voice to the beloved Shakespearean character of Ophelia, the tragic and revered love interest of Hamlet. In the first book, Let Me Tell You, we hear from Ophelia her backstory and point of view that is missing in the play: how she was raised, her experience growing up with Polonius and Laertes, how she really felt about Hamlet. Following that tale comes Let Me Go On, where we meet Ophelia in the afterlife, a purgatory of sorts that features a wandering cast of other Shakespearean players from many different works. The catch, though, is that Griffiths, throughout both novels, only uses words the Ophelia was given in the original play “Hamlet,” a mere 481 total to choose from and utilize.
These conjoined works are without a doubt one of the best pieces of literature I’ve yet to come across. Ophelia, to me, is one of the most voiceless characters in all of Shakespeare’s players. She is consistently mansplained to throughout the play, a reactor in a world of actors. Griffiths, however, saw her more deeply, and gave her a striking and individual voice that previously remained silent.
At its core, this work was a meditation on choice and how we come to accept—or reject—our own destinies. In Let Me Tell You, Ophelia seems to already know how her story will end. For anyone who hasn’t read “Hamlet,” Ophelia dies by drowning near the halfway point of the play, seemingly in response to the devastation of the death of her father Polonius. While it is left ambiguous whether this death was accidental or intentional, what we do know is that this is how her story ends—and Ophelia in this work seems to know that, too. As she walks us through her childhood and into her young womanhood, Ophelia meditates on what her death means and what it should mean to accept it, crying “And me, do I have my own death that I cannot find a path away from? Is there a death I may find that will be away from here, a death that will be my own, and not one that some other lay down for me?” It is Ophelia railing against, not the idea of death itself, but of the idea that she cannot choose it for herself.
This consideration continues in Let Me Go On, as Ophelia post-drowning wanders into an afterlife that is both stark and intriguing, as she encounters many others who consistently refer back to “The Master.” Some deny his existence, some think of him reverently, and others still refuse to even talk about him. As Ophelia ventures deeper into this purgatory, it becomes clear that the “Master” is, of course, William Shakespeare himself, and all of her companions in this world are other players. Ophelia observes that “From what I see, all they do here is remember and remember—all the time. There’s a perfume of the dead and lost.” As Ophelia explores this land further, she begins to forget what she was looking for (another fate, another version of herself), and ultimately concedes “It’s hard as well—still more so—to tell where you should go. … It’s been all me, me, me.” The breathtaking beauty of this work lies in Ophelia’s discovery of herself, of her realization that while she may not be in control of her fate, she can still be in control of who she is—and who she becomes.
I would be remiss not to mention as well the impressive technical work that Griffiths used in order to stay true to those aforementioned 481 words. Obviously, embarking on a project with such scope and yet held tight by such structural restraint is no small feat, and I was greatly surprised and impressed by how Griffiths worked around the lack of some key words. For example, Ophelia never actually says her own name in “Hamlet,” so instead she is referred to as “O,” which of course she says in the context of an exclamation in the play. Words were bled for every possible meaning, an example being Griffiths taking Ophelia’s “will” that she says in the play and turning it into the name of the revered Master. This book taught me that words, even a small amount of them, have the power to become something greater: a new meaning, a new person, a new story. The dual novels of Let Me Tell You/ Let Me Go On are poignant, clever, and strikingly beautiful. Paul Griffiths is the utmost master of language—this work can be described as nothing less than genius of the purest form. This work is not only the best I have read this year, but the best I have read in a long, long time, and for lovers of language, Shakespeare, and the tragic Ophelia, I encourage you to pick up this work and let her tell you, and let her go on.
FICTION
Let Me Tell You/ Let Me Go On
By Paul Griffiths
New York Review Books
Published April 22, 2025
