Tenderness

by Sarah Quigley

A superb collection of stories from a prize-winning writer — some short, some long, set in locations that span the globe, all exploring the theme encapsulated by the title: tenderness.

Meet Sadie, the high-flying divorce lawyer who ends up putting marriages back together; the Ice Cream Girl, discovered in a superette and transplanted to Hollywood; the seven-year-old Prometheus, who faces death on a daily basis. With a mix of humour and compassion, each story carries the punch of a compacted novel, highlighting those illuminating moments of human connection.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

There is more than one author with this name
Born in New Zealand, Sarah Quigley is a novelist and non-fiction writer. She has a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. Her work has been widely published and she has received several high-profile awards.

She has published several novels, two collections of short fiction and poetry, and a creative writing manual. Her new novel, The Conductor, tells the story of the writing of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony and its historic performance in besieged Leningrad in 1942.

Quigley lives and works in Berlin.

Reviews

[Johanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first few stories but find it hard to really get into short stories compared to a full length book.

[Kait · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first story was good, but I lost interest increasingly from there, I have to admit I only read half the book. Which I never do, but it was long and there are more out there.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't usually like short story collections but I do like Quigley's writing. I began reading this anthology yesterday and couldn't put it down - difficult to fully explain why as many of the stories are quite vaguely poetically written with suggestions rather than statements yet somehow they stay in your mind. I'm not sure I fully understood "The English Speakers" but it definitely resonated. There are not very many truly likeable men in the collection but some of them are expertly, witchily presented in a manner which resembles Mansfield. Ralph in "The Addition" and Dante and Bruce in "Transportation" come to mind. "The Marriage Mender" has the most likeable characters including a "carrot and ginger soup" young man. "Waiting for Wolves" is heartbreakingly optimistic and "The Crane" a poignant account of caring.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title for this collection of short stories is a little incongruous. Some of the stories are tender, many are not. The writing is evocative, the characters are well drawn. Sometimes the stories left me feeling content, sometimes unsettled. My favorite story was "The Marriage Mender" about a divorce lawyer who ends up helping people fix their marriages. I will definitely try a novel by this author at some point.