Tender is not strictly a novel, nor is it a conventional short story collection; it’s not even a typical mosaic novel, story cycle, or whatever name you care to give to a collection of linked stories. It is, however, a series of episodes in the lives of the Dax family, beginning in 1974 (when the parents meet), and spanning a total of thirty years. The title appears in the text, not in an emotional context, but in the context of a lamb stew which Ali Dax serves up — but her husband and son don’t More...

Sometimes you want a page turner. Sometimes you want a book that demands you put it down, walk away, come again later. All because you don't want to finish it too soon. Tender is that sort of book.

At first glance a handful of fragments with little tying them together. But then the realisation that this is just how life works. The connections we have are often flimsy. Many lives have little in the way of a clear thread or plot running through them.

Some seems were so si More...

Like small pieces of a bigger picture sewn together in the most engaging way.