Tenderness

by Alison MacLeod

For readers of A Gentleman in Moscow and Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, an ambitious, spellbinding historical novel about sensuality, censorship, and the novel that set off the sexual revolution.

On the glittering shores of the Mediterranean in 1928, a dying author in exile races to complete his final novel. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a sexually bold love story, a searing indictment of class distinctions, and a study in sensuality. But the author, D. H. Lawrence, knows it will be censored. He publishes it privately, loses his copies to customs, and dies bereft.

Thirty years later, in her last days before becoming first lady, Jackie Kennedy learns that publishers are trying to bring D. H. Lawrence’s long-censored novel to American and British readers in its full form. The government has responded by taking the book to court. Determined to enjoy the anonymity she has left and to honor a novel she loves, Jackie attends the trial. But there she is quickly recognized, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover takes note of her interest and her outrage.

Through the story of Lawrence’s writing of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the obscenity trial that sought to suppress it, and the men and women who fought for its publication, Booker Prize–longlisted author Alison MacLeod captures the epic sweep of the twentieth century from war and censorship to sensuality and freedom. Exquisite, evocative, and grounded in history, Tenderness is a testament to the transformative power of fiction.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Books About Books, Historical, Literary Fiction, 21st Century, Literature

624 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 14, 2021

About the author

Alison MacLeod is a novelist and short story writer. Her latest novel is TENDERNESS (2021/22), a Book of the Year for The New York Times, The Spectator, and The Hindustan Times. and a Best Paperback of 2022 for the Sunday Times. Her novel UNEXPLODED was long-listed for the Man-Booker Prize for Fiction, adapted for BBC Radio 4, and named one of the Observer‘s ‘Books of the Year’. Her short story collection ALL THE BELOVED GHOSTS was shortlisted for The Edge Hill Prize for best story collection in the UK and Ireland. It was a 'Best Book of 2017' for the Guardian, and a finalist for Canada’s 2017 Governor General’s Award for Fiction.

MacLeod was born in Montreal, Quebec of Nova Scotian parents and was raised in both Canada and the States. She is a citizen of both Canada and the U.K., and has lived in England since 1987. Brighton is her adopted home; she has lived in the city since 2000.

alison-macleod.com

Reviews

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave up after 50 pages. Whoever compared it to A Gentleman in Moscow was on something.
Do not attempt if cohesive thoughts are a requirement for you.

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

For over thirty years D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was one of the most scandalous books in existence. It divided public opinion, loved or loathed, often by people who’d never read it. Banned in England and America for its alleged depravity, it was the focus of an obscenity trial that arguably heralded the end of an era of social and cultural conservatism. Alison MacLeod’s Tenderness blends fact and fiction to produce an account, almost a cultural history, of Lawrence’s final novel. It’s a complex, non-linear piece opening in 1930 with a dying Lawrence, in exile from England where seized copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover have made him a wanted man. MacLeod's epic saga then moves back and forth in time to mine Lawrence’s past and his novel’s future. Along the way MacLeod takes in a bohemian colony in WW1 Sussex, 1920s’ Italy, London and Cambridge in the 1960s and, unexpectedly, Jackie Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover's F.B.I. in the run-up to John F. Kennedy’s bid for presidency.

MacLeod’s been fascinated by Lawrence’s work and Lady Chatterley’s Lover since her late teens and this frequently reads like a labour of love. Something that’s both a strength and a weakness, her enthusiasm for Lawrence’s clear, and sometimes infectious, but she often seems too close to her subject. The book’s breath-takingly comprehensive, meticulously researched but the level of detail can be overwhelming, and even puzzling. There are areas of repetition and digression suggesting MacLeod couldn’t resist including anything and everything that interested her from her sources - numerous passages read more like footnotes than narrative. There’s a blow-by-blow account of the famous obscenity trial against Penguin Books; an exhaustive record of the famous figures, from Katherine Mansfield to E.M. Forster, who visited Lawrence in his Sussex retreat; a mass of material on Hoover and the F.B.I, that’s not to mention the fictional characters who work to forward the slender plot.

MacLeod's concept's challenging, difficult to translate into compelling fiction: Jackie Kennedy’s imagined links to Lawrence’s “obscene” work, and Hoover’s attempts to exploit that, provide an element of tension but I didn’t find that storyline particularly convincing. Ultimately, MacLeod’s interested in what Lady Chatterley’s Lover represented, its radical potential. She explores the ways in which its highly-charged anti-war, anti-capitalist aspects, its iconoclastic representation of human sensuality might have made it so explosive in Hoover’s America and so disturbing for the old guard of English society. And through this she’s attempting to tell a wider story about the nature of fiction and its transformative potential. All of which I found intriguing, even when I didn’t actually agree with her. Overall, it’s a difficult book to sum up, at times more a series of pieces awkwardly grafted together than a coherent whole. But despite its flaws I found it accessible and frequently highly readable. I particularly enjoyed finding out about Lawrence’s wider literary circle, its links to Bloomsbury and authors I’m more familiar with, and it made me want to know more about Lawrence, a writer I’ve mostly avoided, so in that sense it was successful.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher Bloomsbury for the arc

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's strange knowing the novel “Lady Chatterley's Lover” was subjected to obscenity trials in 1960 and became the focus of heated public debate. The language and subject matter used in this book is hardly considered shocking today which is probably part of the reason why D. H. Lawrence isn't a particularly fashionable or widely-read author anymore - that and the fact the book contains weirdly paranoid anti-Semitic and homophobic ideas expressed by the character of Mellors. Some people would probably argue that looking down on this novel originally published in 1928 for its outdated attitudes is censorship of a different kind but to me it feels like common sense to rigorously critique any book that makes such statements. Yet, the furore surrounding Lawrence's final novel in 1960 is even more bizarre than it first appears when you know what a special interest the FBI took in the trials. This stirred author Alison MacLeod's imagination as well and inspired her to write the novel “Tenderness” - the title which Lawrence originally contemplated calling what became “Lady Chatterley's Lover”.

I love novels such as “Arctic Summer” by Damon Galgut and “The Master” by Colm Toibin which reimagine the lives of authors and consider how their writing was produced alongside events they experienced. It's irresistible to wonder about the personality behind a great book with all the intense passion and dedication which must have gone into writing it. MacLeod adds another dimension to this in her novel by inserting some lines by Lawrence within her story about his journey and the fate of his novel to show the interplay between life and text. The novel begins with the final part of Lawrence's life when he was suffering from tuberculosis, bickering with his wife Frieda and living in voluntary exile on the continent. It then moves onto the events surrounding the trials which take place 30 years after Lawrence's death including a FBI special agent who trails after Jackie Kennedy. He photographs the soon-to-be First Lady at a hearing for “Lady Chatterley's Lover”. We delve into Jackie's perspective and follow a young female literature student whose family was satirised in a short story by Lawrence. Amidst this, the novel frequently flashes back to moments in Lawrence's earlier life, his financial/artistic/romantic struggles and his interaction with other literary figures including E. M. Forester and Katherine Mansfield. The novel also includes a short sequel to “Lady Chatterley's Lover” imagining what events might have followed after the end of Lawrence's story. So there is a lot going on in MacLeod's ambitious novel and it skilfully utilizes its 600 pages to fully integrate all these elements into a coherent and bewitchingly epic story.

Read my full review of Tenderness by Alison MacLeod on LonesomeReader

[Saswati Saha Mitra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tenderness by Alison MacLeod is extraordinary. It’s the love story I have been waiting for.

Love is a many fangled thing in Tenderness. Whether it is Lawrence’s love for his wife Frieda, his romance with Rosalind Baynes or other people finding love due to Lawrence’s works, FBI agent, Harding opening up his life or Dina Wall reconciling her family’s ambivalence for Lawrence for how he represented them in fiction, each protagonist has a unique story of how love sets them free.

And yet getting to true love is not easy, even in the fiction of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the censorship of which is at the heart of the drama of Tenderness. The same themes of judgement and preventing others from living one’s full life, feels so relevant today.

The brilliance of this book depends on the research that has gone into it and the ability to connect characters across time, place and gender by the single theme, is Lady Chatterley’s Lover vulgar and corrupt or is it a great work that breaks the shackles of war time morality and encourages a whole generation to seek a higher connection with another human being?

The history lover in me was so surprised to read about the interest of Jackie Kennedy in the book’s publication in the US. Equally interesting is the role of J. Edgar Hoover in keeping the book out of public hands. You see how those yielding power, use censorship to control free thinking. Sounds familiar?

As I kept reading this 600 pages book, I could not but admire how great books connect us- Lady Chatterley and Jackie Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy and me, with our love for Lawrence’s writing in common. The curiosity I felt for Lawrence’s works as a 14 year old is revived by MacLeod’s homage. She does a fantastic job of representing women and what their hearts seek in a new era from Lawrence but very much in his tradition. Love is freedom.

I hope that this book makes it to all the prize lists for 2021. It is such a different book than what is being published today.

And read Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the book that started it all.

Thank you @bloomsburypublishing for sending me this ARC.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a difficult book to navigate: at its heart is the figure of DH Lawrence, rather affectedly called 'the exile', and his infamous book 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', but stories spin off from there, loosely linked via Lawrence's own past, that of his wife, Frieda, the obscenity trial of the book which put Allen Lane in the dock and, rather oddly, Jackie Kennedy who wanders in in the early 1960s.

There are large swathes of the book which are taken from the actual trial transcripts which are fascinating in themselves but which rather overpower the more nebulous fictional sections. With a tendency to feel directionless and a bit overlong, there are important issues at stake in the book about censorship, who gets to define what 'literature' is, the writing of sexuality and the pushing of boundaries. But the whole thing just didn't engage me enough as a novel.

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many books about DH Lawrence that it’s hard for a novelist to present a different slant on the subject. This year alone Rachel Cusk had a go with Second Place , and Frances Wilson wrote the prize worthy non-fiction Burning Man . Alison Macleod chose to go with an imagined transatlantic link to Jackie Kennedy (the USA Chatterley court case). That’s a clever idea and I enjoyed both the Kennedy and the Sussex Lawrence parts of the book.
In truth they felt like two separate books, and no wonder the book is such a long one.

Sussex Highlights

Lawrence was itinerant through his life and Tenderness concentrates on a brief period as he and his wife, Frieda Weekley departed Italy and spent six months in southern England looking out on the Downs. MacLeod has imagined Lawrence’s simple existence in rural Sussex conceiving and writing novels in the years immediately before his death.
The time Lawrence spent at Greatham Sussex provided both glorious pastoral descriptions, and a host of people to draw from for his novel characters. If you were a friend or acquaintance of Lawrence you needed to beware of becoming book material. Well known writers and kindred spirits were numerous, and MacLeod does a good job incorporating these luminaries in a daily, more unremarkable and mundane daily life. Characters include Henry James; EM Forster; Katherine Mansfield; Bertrand Russell; Ford Maddox Ford all visited Greatham.

MacLeod aligns the six months that Lawrence spent at Greatham in 1922 with the writing of the short story England, my England .
This appears to be a barely concealed fictionalisation of Perceval Lucas who died in World War One, leading to family anguish lasting for generations. The closeness of the extended families, (especially the Morells and the Lucases) is reminiscent of the Bloomsbury set, just down the road, in Charleston.

American Section

MacLeod moves between Sussex and New York (in 1962) using the device of the Lady Chatterley court case as the trans Atlantic and time bridge. Jackie Kennedy represents a new, youthful generation starting to make their voices heard.

• The United States Post Office was the medium set up to contest a case vs Grove Press (Barney Rosset) who had the permission by the author’s widow to publish. It was argued that a public distribution service and its employees would be in jeopardy handling such subversive material.

• J Edgar Hoover. The sticky fingers of Hoover were all over the Lawrence trial, like so many other issues of ‘national interest’. Russian “Active Measures” had been designed to sow domestic discord in the USA and Hoover was the self-proclaimed protector of national morals. Why bother to attack your enemy when you can get the citizens of that nation to turn on each other (83). Nothing much changes in this Trump and Brexit world in the twenty first century.
Rebecca West was drawn into Hoovers web. She decries British secret service. West is a snake whose reputation diminished in my eyes (I had always associated her with truth, and the Nuremberg trials)!!

• Defenders of Free Speech. MacLeod’s account of the progress of the New York court case was excellent I thought. I haven’t read up non fiction accounts of the trial, but I felt I got the full flavour of the controversy and divergence of opinion.
Those reluctant to come forward strongly to defend free speech included: Evelyn Waugh, FR Leavis, Graham Greene, Enid Blyton, Sir Basil Blackwell, Hatchards (manager).
Those who fronted up for the book included: Doris Lessing, Irish Murdoch, Kingsley Amis, Leslie Woolf (who confirmed Virginia and DH Lawrence never met), Stephen Spender, Christina Foyle.

Notwithstanding the notoriety of Lady Chatterley’s Lover In my ignorance I had not known that the original working title for the book was “Tenderness”. Ahead of his time, Lawrence set out to describe the act of sex as a loving action, to “reveal passion and tenderness” (75)
I enjoyed Tenderness very much, not least as a Sussex resident myself and familiar with the views across the Downs so we’ll described in the book. This is clearly a book of immense research and immersion from an author based in Sussex herself. I hope I don’t have to wait another ten years for a follow up Alison McLeod book. Tenderness demonstrates that fictionalised accounts of writers’ lives can make great stories. This and Colm Toibin’s The Magician are my two recent favourites.

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

D H Lawrence, Jackie Kennedy and J Edgar Hoover might seem unlikely bedfellows, but in this wonderfully compelling novel their stories are interwoven to great and sometime surprising effect. “Tenderness” was the original title of Lawrence’s inflammatory novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and it is that book which is the backdrop to and inspiration for this multi-layered novel. There is enough material here for a number of books but MacLeod has expertly drawn all the threads together into one very satisfying tale. “The Exile” opens the novel at the end of Lawrence's life, and explores his life, ambition and writings amongst his friends and family, many of whom became models for the novel – often to their consternation. This part offers the reader real insight into Lawrence’s sometime difficult character and his relationships with others, including his wife Frieda. The second narrative thread – The Subversive” – follows Jackie Kennedy in the run-up to the 1960 presidential election, won of course by her husband JFK. Concerned for the fate of Lady Chatterley's Lover in the US she attends the American trial, necessarily incognito, but is spotted by a fictional FBI agent and is photographed, with this possibly incendiary photograph becoming ammunition in J Edgar Hoover’s machinations to take down her husband, a quite sinister and shameful episode in US history. The third part of the book covers the infamous British trial in 1960, and brings back many of the people who knew Lawrence earlier in life, including some of those whom he offended. This fusion of fiction and non-fiction is both gripping and convincing, and the result is a seriously ambitious novel that succeeds brilliantly. How much is true, how much fiction? Readers will have to do their own research, but this creative and original work is a fabulous piece of writing, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

[Robin Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

This epic novel is mesmerizingly beautiful and without a doubt the best book I have read in a great many years. I'm not sure I will read a better book in this lifetime.
The novel moves with the pace of a thriller. The structure is stunning. D.H. Lawrence is tenderly and lovingly drawn and the huge cast of literati contemporaries add a realism and awareness that no factual biography could equal.
What makes this book so magnificent is the way in which the author has brought together Lawrence and his contemporaries, Jackie Kennedy, the FBI, and the London trial, with the precision of a vintage timepiece.
Existing Lawrence fans will love and cherish this novel. Anyone new to Lawrence will rush to their nearest bookshop and buy everything they can find by him.
Like Lady Chatterley's Lover this is a novel to appreciate and learn from. It is profoundly intelligent and perceptive, compelling and uplifting, and utterly unforgettable.

[Tundra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book finishes with an exhilarating and page turning court case but wow… 593pages … it took me a long time to get there. A fascinating recreation of the final days of D H Lawrence, the rise of JF Kennedy (through the eyes of Jackie), the mania and power of J Edgar Hoover through the eyes of an imagined agent and the British court case against Penguin books to ban the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. This is a mid-century drama like no other. Macleod has clearly impeccably researched this period - the events and cultural challenges that faced a modernised world as well as the dismantling of Lawrence’s post World War 1 world - devastating and grim. Just providing a brief description like this will give you some idea of what is in this tome. This is really long, goes into extensive detail of settings, characters, people, side stories… I would have been happier with a shorter novel but I appreciate that this is half a century of events and the author had me totally immersed in them.

[Hermien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three intriguing stories are interwoven in this book. Some biographical material about D.H. Lawrence's life, the Court case in 1960 to determine whether Penguin should be allowed to publish Lady Chatterley's Lover in its entirety and it also deals with Jackie Kennedy who finds herself in Edgar J. Hoover's sights for being "caught" reading the banned book. It led to lots of Googling and interesting fact checking.

[Penny (Literary Hoarders) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful writing. The sections with D.H. Lawrence were a little scattershot and convoluted and I enjoyed the Jackie Kennedy parts more. A wee touch too long but a very satisfying read because of the subjects and the writing.

[Geof Sewell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tenderness and Thomas Cromwell
This is Alison MacLeod’s third historical novel and the first to be long-listed for the Booker Prize. Its main focus is on the impact of D H Lawrence’s writing and the controversies that surrounded it in his lifetime and beyond. We start in the Sussex retreat for pacifists at the beginning of the First World War, owned by the Catholic Meynell family, which became the inspiration for Lawrence’s seminal story: England My England. Then we move to Sicily, Florence and the race between the TB that was killing him and the completion of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Then Hyannis Port and J Edgar Hoover’s unsuccessful use of FBI surveillance to sabotage Jack Kennedy’s presidential hopes through his wife Jackie’s enthusiasm for Lady C. And it ends with the Old Bailey trial that would usher in the sexual revolution.
I would compare Tenderness to Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, in terms of its length, detail and rigour. There’s a fulsome account of the trial; an exhaustive record of the cultural stars, from Bertrand Russell to E.M. Forster, who got to know Lawrence in Sussex; and a trove of material on F.B.I. dirty tricks. Through them, she explores Lawrence’s critiques of the English leisured classes, war, capitalism & industrialisation, which made America paranoid and alarmed the English establishment. In focusing on one of the Meynells’ grandchildren, who became a defence witness at the trial and later a successful novelist, she makes the case for the regenerative power of his fiction.
If you hung in there with Hilary Mantel’s trilogy, you’ll enjoy this. They both grasp a keynote moment in history. Mantel’s novels were about the way Thomas Cromwell focuses on minute shifts in the King’s mood, professionalised English statecraft and shook off the power of the Medieval aristocracy. Macleod’s focuses on the textures of love and the senses, the stirrings of second-wave feminism and Lawrence’s ultimately successful challenge to official censorship.
Like Alison MacLeod, I have been fascinated by Lawrence since adolescence. I reread Lady Chatterley recently and was shocked by its anti-Semitism. Alison Macleod acknowledges this and wider feminist criticisms. But she writes with a real sense of joy about the liberation Lawrence offers. I did little else but read it for four days and, while everyone knows the trial’s outcome, I was devastated to reach the end. Though its structure is indisputably baggy, I found the writing style poetic and highly readable. I particularly enjoyed finding out more about the pacifists who challenged and emboldened Lawrence.

[Stephen Dilley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tenderness is a sweeping historical novel which explores D.H. Lawrence's life and legacy, from his original conception of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1915 to the book's obscenity trial in 1960, which happened in the same week as Kennedy's election.

Overall I found this an immensely enjoyable and illuminating novel; MacLeod's research is meticulous and she deftly weaves together real events, imagined events involving real-life characters and entirely imagined characters. In particular the storyline involving Jackie Kennedy, J Edgar Hoover and an FBI agent makes an effective counterpart to the obscenity trial, with both showing the "grey elderlies" who have controlled society up to this point are unable to withstand the surging tide of liberalism. Another great strength of the novel is the way that MacLeod succeeds in building genuine tension even though the outcome of both the election and the trial are already known.

MacLeod's characters are all fully realised. Lawrence, in particular, emerges as a deeply flawed figure, at times intensely voyeuristic and exploitative, but also gifted with a rare understanding of human relations. The illustrious gallery of star witnesses in the trial are convincingly sketched, and MacLeod even shows compassion for the novel's antagonists, as with this description of the prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones: "He was not unaware of his own narrowness, He knew that, beneath the Savile Row suit, the barristerial silk and wig, there shivered the man who stood naked under a cold shower each morning, and who, in spite of himself, wanted a woman like Constance to love him, to forgive him, and to release him from the person he didn't know how not to be."

MacLeod's writing is engaging with some passages of beautiful lyricism. In spite of the novel's length and its non-chronological structure, it is for the most part a highly compelling read. A few passages do drag somewhat, particularly near the beginning, and at times the style becomes more biographical than novelistic, especially when writing about Lawrence's time in Sussex in 1915. A couple of stylistic choices felt a little gimmicky, too - the interleaving of passages from Lady Chatterley's Lover is effective in places but began to feel rather overdone, as did the use of backwards text during some flashbacks.

For the most part, however, this is a clever, absorbing and rather beautiful book which celebrates the tenderness and intimacy of Lawrence's writing and life.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

[Topher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book centres around the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover and its author DH Lawrence. It is fiction based on a historical time line. I found this book utterly entralling. The links to Jackie O, and J Edgar hoover added an element of intrigue that really drew me into the story. It was also revelatory in regard to D H Lawrence. It showed him in a not very flattering light. I would say that I think there are parts that could have been shortened to create more concision. Despite the verbose sections, the book was very good and should be picked up by more people. I feel like this should be getting more attention. I appreciate the original Lady Chatterley's Lover text way more than I did 20 years ago in school. I would give this a 5/5.

[Paula · Rating 1 out of 5]

Drowns the reader in disjointed,random observations,overblown metaphors, a surfeit of similes, to the point it suffocates the book I presume was in there.
Just no.

[Kathleen Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know this is a challenge to read- it sprawls and includes trial transcripts- but stick with it. DH Lawrence never expected Lady Chatterley's Lover to engender the uproar it did or the way it would wrap in even Jacqueline Kennedy. He knew it would be a difficult sell and sadly, he died without seeing it published. This is not only a wonderful work of historical fiction, it is also a thought provoking reminder of censorship. Tame by 2021 standards, the novel was at the center of a debate and a prosecution about what is obscene. I learned a great deal about Lawrence's life as well as about Rosalind, the inspiration for Lady Chatterly. Even better I found myself poking for additional information about other real life individuals who appear in the pages. It might tempt you, at times, to skip pages or put it down but know that MacLeod will pull you back in. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A must read for fans of literary fiction.

[Sarah Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tenderness is the beautifully written, totally engrossing story of the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover and the censorship battles it faced not only at its initial publication but also later in 1960 in the UK and a year earlier in the USA. Woven in to the details of the trials is some of D H Lawrence's life and also the lives of the people he met and incorporated in to his stories. The US part of the story follows a different road with the interest of Jackie Kennedy in the novel. You build an affinity with so many of the characters and not always the main ones within the stories.

A truly great story, not an easy read at over 600 pages long but one that is definitely worth reading.

I was given a copy of Tenderness by NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

[Amy Mellisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Tenderness' is a story about the beauty of life, love, and relationships. It intersects and slowly weaves together into a gorgeous tapestry of a book. The writer knows how to create atmosphere and evoke emotion in the crossing of events during different time periods. I'm going to pick up a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover and give the 'exile' a chance because of it. It is one of the best books I've read this year.

[Karen Hunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really interesting book about D.H. Lawrence that captured a number of different voices/experiences across eras. The legal cases were particularly fascinating. I enjoyed this book, but it wasn’t always easy to follow on audiobook. It also felt a bit dense at time and like the author was trying to fit too much into the one book.

[David Boddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweeping testament about a transformative novel.

[Theresa Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tenderness is the type of novel that readers will either love or hate, I can’t see any middle ground with this one. It’s enormous, it’s literary, it winds and weaves and jumps around and has about a half a dozen different, and rather complex, stories unfolding. It’s taken me so long to read I felt like I was in a relationship with it. But the time and effort has been so worth it.

‘Any good photo is a secret of a secret’.

I started reading this with the actual book, but after about 200 pages, I decided to give the audiobook a try and I didn’t look back. It is narrated by a cast, and this really went a long way towards enhancing the reading experience, with all of the many characters and storylines, you could all of a sudden distinguish between them all as well as obtaining a vivid sense of atmosphere. Something to note, about the recording. I was listening to it in the car, with my speaker, and then also with earbuds. It was only when I had my earbuds in that I could pick up on something a little extra in the recording. The passages that were of DH Lawrence’s work being recalled by the ‘voice’ that was meant to be DH Lawrence had a sound underneath it akin to an old record. It really gave those parts this old-world feel, but you couldn’t hear that unless you had earbuds in, it was very subtle. Anyway, I highly recommend the audiobook, as far as audio productions go, it’s a real winner.

‘She will never know or need to know the import of the story. She has no interest in its author’s purpose, moral, didactic or artistic. Its ending, she understands, is horrid and sad. But she needs no protections form its inventions and distortions. Indeed, she is grateful to Lawrence. He has, briefly, returned her husband to her, something the army never did.’

Tenderness was the working title for Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the notion of tenderness comes up over and over throughout this novel. The complexity of this novel is immense; I am in awe of the research (there are dozens of pages of sources in the end pages) and the way in which the author has then woven so many threads into a cohesive whole. This really is a novel for those who love the deep dive, the sort of novels that are few and far between now, layers upon layers of characterisation and plotting. It is so beautifully written and gorgeously ‘wordy’, which as you all know is my ‘thing’. I love it when a writer can properly use the English language to its full potential.

‘The violation by language is a difficult thing to describe to those who have not experienced it.’

Tenderness is essentially a story inching its way towards the historic court case whereby Allen Lane, publisher of Penguin books, was prosecuted in the 1960s for intending to issue an unabridged edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which had been a banned book previously. The resulting acquittal of Penguin and Allen Lane is an historic moment in the history of freedom of speech. But instead of just covering this case, Alison MacLeod has created an entire universe in which we are immersed into the history of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and DH Lawrence, from the novel’s creation right through to its reissuing after the landmark acquittal. Along the way, we are in multiple countries with multiple people, spanning decades and even becoming invested in the creation of Lawrence’s other works. This is a complex novel that is best suited to readers who love to know the stories behind the stories, in all their miniature.

‘Some people’s company made you feel lonelier, the gusts of them found your gaps and holes and whistled right through.’

In ending this novel, Alison MacLeod offers us a beautifully imagined ending for Constance and Mellors, the lovers from Chatterley. It was an unexpected yet utterly perfect way to end such a brilliant and absorbing novel. This one sat on my shelf unread for far too long, but perhaps, as is often the way, I eventually read it at the right time.

[Gary Daly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could be my best read of 2021. Probably will be as 2021 is closing in on the finish. The wonderful surprise about reading and discovering Alison Macleod’s latest novel, ‘Tenderness’ is that I had zero idea about this book. I had passed by it on the shelves a number of times over the last couple of weeks. I generally browse by reading about up and coming books (not reviews I enjoy going in cold), then visit bookshops and walking through the thousands of titles hoping to pick a gem. This was my gem for this reading year. I finally picked the book up on Monday (6/12/2021) and the back book business blurb didn’t allude to the narrative content. Blurb focussed on the reading effects! So I nearly put it back but decided to check out the endsheet (inside of cover page) and I was hooked. The first line, “It is 1930, and D. H. Lawrence, exiled from his native England,…” Say no more. This is a brilliant telling of the life and ebb and flow of Lawrence’s final book, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ throughout its history. Alison Macleod writes a brilliant fictional history with an array of fantastic vibrant and living characters (including Lawrence) and how they experience and connect with ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. Over 50 years characters moved back and forth in time. From D. H. Lawrence to J. Edgar Hoover, Jacqueline Kennedy and others. It’s a time consumer and worth every reading minute. Such a great book. One that I will certainly come back to again. Macleod’s deep dive into the mind of Lawrence is a sharper and more meaningful experience for readers familiar with D . H. Lawrence’s life and writing. I have been reading and enjoying Lawrence’s novels for years and this novel
Just fits like a warm glove. Fantastic and beautiful. Bought from Big W Library for $16.00. Enjoy…

[MaryAnn Benson · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this work of historical fiction, Ms. MacLeod weaves together a variety of plots and character profiles in a compelling history of one of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century, Lady Chatterley's Lover. The complexity of this book is sheer genius. If the author had simply provided us with biographical information on D.H. Lawrence's personality and non-conformist lifestyle, that would have been a major work itself. However, we also are treated to a "biography" of his most famous novel whose release in 1928 sparked a maelstrom of criticism and legal actions to suppress its publication. Thirty years later it reemerges when a British publishing house boldly reissues it, generating a fierce legal battle watched closely by such prominent figures of history as J. Edgar Hoover and Jacqueline Kennedy. To the infamous (and morally flawed) director of the FBI the reissue follows painfully close to the era of theMcCarthy Communism witch-hunts. He becomes determined to see the book suppressed to save society from total collapse. Mrs. Kennedy represents the other side of the question, fighting for an atmosphere of literary freedom devoid of censorship, while facing the grueling campaign process, the flaws in her own marriage and the prospect of stepping onto the world stage as First Lady. Ms. MacLeod uses the basic trellis of the historical record and creates a masterpiece of semi-fiction to provide a lush garden of possibilities for this book's journey.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this in exchange for an honest review in a First Reads giveaway. There were a number of things I loved about this book. The author's use of language to draw verbal pictures was one of the highlights of the book. I don't remember the last time I read anything where the author even came close to her ability to do that. The main problems with this book is that it is too long and too choppy. It would help to have fewer storylines going so the story would be streamlined and easier to follow.

[Nelda Brangwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve ever wondered about the author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and want to know more about DH Lawrence and his life, this fictionalized account is right up your alley. Its not fast-paced, but there’s so much detail about the storm this book caused in England. Author, Alison McLeod, turns to Lawrence’s autobiography for the details about his indecency trial. Well worth reading if you want to know more about this eloquent man and his life.

[EMD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Outstanding novel. This was completely compelling. The characters had such depth and humanity. It’s one of my absolute favourites of all time.

[Elma Chowdhury]

I could not continue this, seemed disjointed and I was not interested in the subject matter /:

[Mathilde · Rating 5 out of 5]

The smudge of an ocean-liner materialised at what might have been the horizon, while light streamed - the run-off from the warp and weft of the world. (7)

But it was time to go, and his desires were no longer straightforward, if they had ever been. (14)

He needed her to live. Perhaps he always had. Any biddable wife would have tranquilised brain and soul. He'd needed the challenge of her. Perhaps he'd even needed the problem of her. (14)

There was too much pathos, too much beauty of old things passing, and new things coming ... people ... no longer knew how to feel alive in their lives. (22)

But this, the piercing loneliness of the everyday would finish him off. He'd known despair, deep despair, but it seemed nothing to today's sudden, radiant apprehension of the life which goes on beautifully, fuckingly heedless. (24)

He was something apart at last, something inalienable, something beyond language. Where were the stars? Had even they left him for dead? (26)

Perhaps it made her more grateful for life. Perhaps it made her feel. (53)

Inwardly, if not outwardly, she was changed. She carried a sense of another self she might have been in France, perhaps, or possibly England: of other truths glimpsed. (55)

It was a calming thing, self-possession. (55)

She knew how to summon something of the inner while yielding to the outer, to the eye of the photographer. One had to let oneself be taken. (59)

There were worse fates, she supposed, but, then and there, she couldn't think of any. (61)

More than anything, he had a lovely ease about him, a compelling nonchalance. He asked questions. Everything, everybody fascinated him, it seemed. He watched more than he spoke. He had a certain reserve, and she discovered he loved books. She could see he was a reader of people too, and shrewd with it; she could feel that in him ... but if he was shrewd and watchful, he was generous too. (64)

There was nowhere he felt more himself than in the solitude of a darkroom, watching the ineffable stuff of being materialise. It still felt like magic. How did the spirit of a personal, in heat and lightwaves, touch and change a piece of film? (96)

‘We can’t afford lamb.’
‘Don’t fret. Not lamb. Shepherd. I went out and killed one myself.’
A smile got the better of her mouth.
Then he sat down by her side and fed her, forkful by forkful. (162)

She was, he feared, the sort of endearingly vibrant young woman whose destiny was bound to be one of unrequited love of the most intense variety, followed, ultimately, by spinsterdom. It was all wrong, he decided, for she possessed a wonderful smile which made him sit up and forget he was ill. How hard the world could be on women. (163)

[in a letter] And a fire in one’s bedroom all dancy in the dark. (175)

Play, for Mary, is a serious matter, and she is impatient with their slow recall of the rules. They must pay attention! (177)

… [their] lame daughter, Sylvia, was in the orchard, jumping at the new blossom. She was stuffing her coat pockets with it. (193)

She was beautiful as she jumped *like a poem in herself.* (193)

In fact, the exile suspected Madeline was secretly *glad* her husband was away; glad he was acquiring definition in the world; glad he would match her own energy at last. (195)

On [thus] peaceful street, every new leaf that morning was like some green, flickering flame, a Pentecostal tongue of fire speaking at a pitch he could no longer hear. (201)

The evening light was golden, the clouds gilded. ... The liquid light just before sunset that makes the world sharp and soft at the same time. You saw the full beauty of the day just before it was gone. (212)

Because when you think things can't get worse; they always can. (213)

Sex was the only state in which a woman could achieve - not the power of high ambition or 'power games', which were mere manipulation and flattery - but the power which came with vitality. It was something far greater than the colour to the cheeks after sex. It was the power of self-possession, of being alive in one's body. Very few achieved it. Most only idolised it or envied it.
Her own experience was limited, but she knew instinctively that such power came only with intimacy; with the secret act of beholding the public, daily person - the lover, sanctioned or illicit - transformed in one's presence into a private, raw spirit. That was power: to be a part of such life-force, or even the conduit of it. The power to transform; to return someone to the person they actually always were, their innermost. Everything else was only the animal drive to reproduce. (221)

It was one of those June mornings, radiant and sluiced by wind. (222)

The smoke of the cigarette rose into the air, vague as a thought. (231)

'In my view, we don't need "purity." We need to be mature enough to admit the contradictory, the various. Crazy as it sounds, I'd like to see a politics for this country that never strays far from poetry. Or from poetic truth, at least. We need its complexity. We need its simplicity. Poetry keeps us honest. It admits all that is human and it lets us see it, love it and wrestle with it. With education in poetic truth and in the human complexities we find in great novels ... our emotions are less likely to run rings around us and wreak havoc... The education of *all* our faculties is everything. If we glorify the conceptual or the rational at the expense of all else, we do so at our peril. Manipulators and predators will exploit our emotions.' (236)

'Yet, for the writer, [style, aesthetic and technique] do not arrive in parcels of theme and form. They arrive in a wave, in a shimmer. They are experienced as a feeling across the back of the neck, or a pressure in the heart during the deep "excavation" of a story. ... A story is not a concept or a story or a theme. It is an author's breath, heat and heartbeat - and when I say that, I don't mean to suggest that the process is primitive or unsophisticated. Quite the opposite, in fact.' (237)

'She simply wants to be known.' She blinked. 'In both the biblical sense, *and* in the more ordinary sense too. She simply wants to be known, in her self, for who she is. She only wants to know that she will be *known* in this life.' (238)

Trolling watch her close her notebook. How interesting it was that no one ever knew what youth was while they still had it. She was half-formed still, and mysterious with it, perhaps above all to herself. (239)

Yet it was true: other people were endlessly fascinating. (261)

Six months on, he still felt the loss of this woman he did not know, as tenderly as a scar. (280)

On the count of three, he stared into the lens again, as if to say, ‘I am precisely where I am meant to be – I could only ever have been here.’ 299

She knows the true proportions of life. She knows, too, that the truths of love and life cannot be written over. 300

Even in far-away Italy, she can see again the green flanks of the Downs, the swaying pines, the brooding oaks, and the shaggy common. She can see the pink hollyhocks and the purple-and-white columbines, blooms her husband coaxed from the stubborn turf. 300

She has not known the sense of home – of deep intimacy, of body beside body, familiar to familiar – since his death. Perhaps she’ll not know it again […] She is proud, for it is their love and no one else’s which charges his words, and that love cannot be bent to any purpose. 301

Let it be, he used to say to her and the children. Let it be.
They were beknown and beloved.
It is rare, and it is enough. 302

Be sure to visit me in my new abode. I expect you to come bearing wet maps, songs and poems. I shall be lost if you don’t. Come see me through this unbearable war, won’t you? 306

Why is his life so transient? Where are the roots of himself? 306

He can feel it now – reality snapping at his heels. 306

Time cleaves into past and future. 307

She possesses a powerful independence of spirit, and is luminous with it. Indeed, in some peculiar way, he stands in the courtyard now, he loves her as if she were his own [daughter], and he regrets she is not. (309)

He will not know for another five years: Italy, the 10th of September, 1920. Hers will be the white house at the end of the terraced row, high on a hill overlooking Florence – a house and hill unimaginable to them now. The house will lie at the end of a steep track, above a flickering olive grove. Lights will arise in the balmy dark beyond her balcony, *like night flowers opening.* They will be new to one another, no longer the detainees of a country spellbound by war. 309

As the two stand – poised on the brink of an inscrutable future – in the grassy courtyard among the Meynell clan, something in their neurons, primitive and plastic, something which admits no difference between memory and presentiment, brims with that September night to be, for such are the secret, unchartable transfigurations of love. 309

But she couldn’t deceive herself. There was a problem and *she* was it. Her nature was too passionate. Sometimes it made the society of others seem mild to the point of sedation. Almost everyone seemed content enough. What was wrong with her? 316

As a child in the woods of Greatham and Rackham, she had known what it was to be alive under her skin, and she was determined not to forget it. 316

In the inventory of herself, she did not discover beauty, but she did not fare badly. 318

It seemed against the odds, two people not only liking each other, but wanting each other. What magic. 318

Privately, she didn’t expect her first experience of sex to be the stuff of ‘souls conjoined’ […] She only wanted someone who might catch her imagination. She only wanted ‘a story.’ Perhaps she even wanted to be *in* a story. Briefly. 319

Somewhere a bonfire was burning – she could smell the sweetness of the smoke – and, in the hedgerows, the blackberries were ripe. She’d take out a pail later and pick for her grandmother. 319

In family life, we all revert. 325

What did she know of restless hearts other than her own? It was one thing to invent; it was quite another to *have no idea.*
She was aware she was rather ‘unformed’ in the eyes of the world, even if she felt fully formed – brimmingly so – in herself. She had read so much in her life throughout her life that she felt she possessed the glittering sediment of countless lives and experiences in the bedrock of herself. Not that she could convey as much as that. 326

She turned and looked at the clock on the wall and panicked. In the fleeting interval he seized her hand. How lovely. 334

She climbed a step-ladder to look out the only windows, a small rectangle of glass, high up. The moon was out, golden and recumbent – a woman’s face in profile, tipped back, as if she were about to be kissed. 334-5

She ignored him and opened the book to a random page and started to read aloud, suddenly strangely unselfconscious in front of a boy – a man – who stared and wouldn’t look away. 337

‘… Frankly, I hadn’t expected you’d be quite *this* easy to please.’
She kicked his shin.
He couldn’t help himself: ‘*Dewey* look good together or dewey not?’ 337

She forgot books and novel and words as she entered the trance of her body. In the semi-darkness, his voice was a warm frequency travelling through her […] What was carried in the current of a human voice? 339

Pages 334 - 354

She loved the naked nape of a man’s neck; they were still children there somehow. 343

Finally, at the top of the stone staircase where his lips had first brushed the lobe of her ear, they stood, dazzled by each other, and embarrassed. 343

She'd had little sleep and was still caught in the heady uplift of the night. Not ‘rapture’, but fullness. She had liked being re-made in her lover’s hands into an object of desire, a yearned-for body. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to like being objectified, but she had. She’d loved his touch, his hunger, and as she walked, she felt again the electricity of that first clasping of palms as he led her up the stairs. 344

.. or the imaginative entering int the mind, soul, spirit, or body of another. The life of the body was not, for Lawrence, separate form those other things. Rather, it was the way *to* those things, and could not be divided from them. 347

“We should ask for no absolutes, or absolute. Once and for all and for ever, let us have done with the ugly imperialism of the absolute.” D. H. Lawrence, quoted on 349

Harding knew it was illusory as anything else; that, under the skin of the world, all of life was restless. 361

The heat of summer goes – tick – tick, like the overworked engine of a year that is slow to cool. 399

It is all a very long time ago. But the present has deep pockets. 414

‘[a letter] I would describe him as an elderly young man’ 435

[..] and who, in spite of himself, wanted a woman like Constance to love him, forgive him, and to release him from the person he didn’t know how not to be. 439

Here was a moment he would not soon forget.
He felt rather emotional.
‘Tea?’ he said. 451

[in acknowledgements]
And to all readers, ‘subversive’, dedicated, entertained or passionate – and quietly present on the other side of these traversable boundary-lines of print. 601

He agreed to drive on one condition: they had to leave by 6a.m., to catch the pearly light. With women, you wanted the 'sweet light' at the end of the day or the pearly light of early morning. 498

She turned to him. 'I don't think I've ever seen something so beautiful.'
He nodded. Discomforted bu her directness, by the scent of her hair, by the fullness of her thighs on the seat; by the flickering lure of happiness, the danger of it. A bright flashing thing dangled on a line before him. Should he bite? Did he even know how? 499

Some peoples company made you feel lonelier; the gusts of them found your gaps and holes and whistles right through. But her company was like a breeze clearing his head; he felt more awake. 499

In these incandescent moments, by the light of a mean lamp, with the all of Cathleen pressed against him, soft, alive and wanting, he simply *is he is he is he is*, and there is peace at last. 519

.. and some undefinable quality in her presence makes drinkers at the bar turn to watch.
Perhaps the aura of a beautiful woman outlasts her beauty, or perhaps she inspires something more than passing admiration, for she seems to carry an ageless, untouchable quality ; the glow of an inner life undimmed by time. 530

And Lawrence. He had opened windows within her. 534

.. [Lady Chatterly's Lover] opens with the sentence 'Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.' He says to the reader 'we are among the ruins ... there is now no smooth road into the future.' The novel as he wrote it held out hope that this state of affairs wasn't all; that there was some way out of the drab and dead existence he describes. 535

She tells him that, when she was a child, they lived in Surrey on a half-acre estate by a sandy heath, a murky green canal and a little wood which formed the geography of her dreams for years and years. 539

Slowly, the lights go out over Florence, but his arms, his chest, are warm. 539

'But that was the first time we camped out, at the top of Ashdown Forest, everything was very rugged. So Godwin and I made ourselves a bed of moss with a roof of evergreen boughs, then lay down in the darkness and listening to the hearing of the wind in the fir trees. It was weird and magical. I still remember the charge that hummed in the space between our bodies, and yet it would t have occurred to either of us to act on it, and perhaps it would have spoiled things if we had.' 542

'Italy is nice - very nice indeed - lovely lovely sun & sea.' 543

'Without sex, I mean.'
Oddly, she does not mind his curiosity. It surprises her that she does not. She laughs. 'Well, I should like to have it again naturally.'
'What's stopping you?'
'I'm not sure anything is.' She lifts the weight of her hair from her neck. 'One only has to be discriminating.'
'Of course. One can hardly bear to share a bus seat with most people, let alone a bed.'
'Precisely. And at a certain age, one wants more than ew-drops of flattery and off-to-bed-we-go.'
'I agree, that's tawdry. Love is a force. Impersonal, to some extent; something sprung up from the elemental world. What are we to it?' He pauses. 'It's up to you.' 545

'Because there is, is there not, a high breathlessness about beauty which cancels lust?' 557

She, for her part, feels only sustained. Her chest still buzzes with the night before. Joy - when she resigned herself to stoicism, to the mere endurance of the heart. 559

'The end cracks open with the beginning : / Rosy, tender, glittering within the fissure.' from Pomegranate, poem by DH L

How beautiful the world is, she thinks. 564

'How rare our time has been,' he says, his voice low. 'Beyond measure. I shall not forget it: this balcony, our hillside, our words - you.'
They are loving words, and she is moved. They are also words which tell her he will not be hers; that he will leave. The knowledge comes like a punch to the lungs. 546-5

She'd been foolish to give him her trust.
Yet she'd been *hungry.* 565

*Well, so many words because I can't touch you.* 572

*We're out each day in the gondola, and I've written little that isn't watery and adrift.* 572

But to stand alongside [the trees] is to be returned to one's proper proportions. That humbling isa steadying force , a profound reassurance and, if the place is still new to her, the earth always remembers her. 591

... life lived against the odds, amid the flux of its failures and everyday beauty. 596

For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.
It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack. - Pomegranate, DHL

[Kris McCracken · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Tenderness” by Alison MacLeod knocked me clean sideways. It’s a monster of a novel, messy, ambitious, utterly alive. The kind of book that starts out bold, then gets bolder, as if daring you to look away. The central conceit is a ripper. Tracking how Lawrence’s scandalous little novel claws its way into daylight is gripping as hell. You read on because deep down you want free speech to land a clean punch on the jaw of every pompously censorious fuckwit who ever clutched their pearls.

MacLeod runs her dual timeline like she’s got second sight. Lawrence is rendered as this grubby, brilliant alchemist, brewing sensuality and class rage like some half-mad chemist in a back room. Then she flicks to the 1960 obscenity trial and suddenly it’s all wigs, smoke, panic and sly humour. The courtroom bits crackle. The fourth-wall nudges are cheeky. And here’s the unexpected part: the book warmed me to Lawrence. I’ve always kept him at arm’s length, half convinced he was a bit much, but MacLeod gives you the man, the nerve, the yearning, the belief that bodies and emotions are tied up together in ways society still pretends not to understand. It’s sensual without being prissy, almost talismanic.

The trial scenes nearly become a thriller, full of dust, sweat, panic and clever people trying to pretend they’re above the whole sweaty mess. It has that rattling energy of "important," sprawling novels, where history and fiction get jammed together and somehow spark. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

Now, the Jackie Kennedy and FBI detour. Christ. I actually shook my head at first. You can hear the gears grind as the novel changes lanes. To MacLeod’s credit, it’s written with style and Harding, the FBI bloke, is an absolute gem of a character. Quietly wounded, perceptive, oddly noble. But the whole subplot sits apart, like a beautiful limb grafted onto the wrong body. I can see why she did it, and it adds rhythm, but it never lands the same blow as the Lady Chatterley material. My inner sceptic rolled his eyes, though I’ll concede she pulls it off better than my attitude deserved.

The last pages floored me. That imagined afterlife for Constance and Mellors is so tender it sneaks up on you. Not sentimental sludge, just a clean, aching hit of beauty. A proper tribute to the beating heart of Lawrence’s vision. Love as rebellion. Love as oxygen. Love as the one thing a courtroom can’t legislate out of existence.

MacLeod’s passion leaks out of every page. Her love for Lawrence, for Sussex, for the sheer ecstasy of writing, gives the novel its charge. It’s sprawling, indulgent, wildly too long in places, and Christ yes, you need a flowchart to keep track of the six leads, but when she gets it right, the whole thing thrums. The sensuality is raw, the politics sharp, the prose vivid enough to make your teeth itch. The Bernardine Wall and even the Jackie Kennedy subplots echo the same tenderness and desire Lawrence was banging on about nearly a century ago.

It’s not perfect. Hoover’s inner monologue is a two-note dirge and some chapters feel like they’ve wandered in from a different book and refused to leave. The bulk can drag. Nevertheless, the book’s reach is huge, and the ambition mostly pays off. MacLeod swings for the fences and hits more than she misses.

“Tenderness” is big, unruly, sexy, angry, and weirdly moving. Serious flaws, serious brilliance, but the brilliance takes the crown. Five stars.

[Rach Roberts · Rating 2 out of 5]

With thanks to #Netgalley in exchange for an honest review
#Tenderness #bloomsburypublishing

Tenderness was quite the epic novel - as promised in the blurb and other publisher notes attached to it. Epic in the sense of length, character cast and yet not really in the 'sweeping saga' attire it was supposedly clad in.
At 650 pages plus, though the premise had promise, this was not a page turner, nor did it have strength in it's longevity.
An interesting subject matter, a thoroughly fascinating look at the ways and means by which publishing and censorship can strikingly clash, but in a narrative structure that meandered and could have got the same job done in about half of the pages written here.
MacLeod drops us into events at some locale of the Mediterranean in 1928, where her manifestation of the author, D. H. Lawrence is racing to finish the once controversial Lady Chatterly's Lover - yet he knows it will be censored. At this point in his life, he is a dying and already exiled author. Irregardless, he publishes it privately, loses his copies to customs, and dies with nothing.
This opening section intrigued - in MacLeod dropping us into the actionable events of the author's plight, enigmas were aplenty from the get go and readers will genuinely invest in the final hopes or outcomes of the Lawrence life and estate.
Then the meandering began, in which there was a lot of exposition, a lot of talking around what should be the book's core focus, in order to set up a premise that essentially is not useful in reaching the final endpoint of Tender....450 or so pages later...
The following set of chapters flash forward thirty years, and taking the character and presumptive life of a pre-election Jackie Kennedy learning that publishers are trying to bring Chatterly - at this point a long-censored novel - to publication. The US government has responded by taking the book to court. Herein, the postulation of the love she has for the 'forbidden' book leads to her attendance at the trial - supposedly the intent here is to add drama or further intrigue to the publication story of Chatterly. But in MacLeod's tethering of more famous faces to the book, this becomes a trite and somewhat overblown segment included to show how Kennedy wanted to honour a novel she loves. The reader may just question why or if it was needed.
Add to this another subplot about J. Edgar Hoover who is tracking her actions, noting her interest and her outrage...and we are another 200 pages further forward with nothing to show for a plot as such. This started to become a very long series of vignettes about interactions with adjacently facing events linked to the novel

This is then a book, however well-written, with a range of characters that do feel rounded and complete, slowly rambles towards a conclusion - some coverage of the obscenity trial that hoped to abolish the book, and then the character portraits of the men and women who fought for its publication.

Not a bad premise - not even, in places, a bad execution of telling the story of this novel. But with such a crisp, direct and adept prose style, and skill in drawing characters to life, MacLeod certainly did not need to draw out this story to such lengths to really get readers understanding the plight of Lady Chatterly's Lover, DH Lawrence or the legacy he left behind.