Tender - Softcover

Tender is an amazing novel, gripping, completely compelling, and at once demanding and satisfying. Belinda McKeon has an inimitable, to-die-for writing style, and a sublime talent for constructing a clear, often poetic exposition of the complexities of friendship and love, of the unfathomable nature of human relationships. (Donal Ryan, author of THE SPINNING HEART)

Utterly exquisite, unflinchingly observed, Tender is the story of a specific obsessive love, but also the story of youth itself, the blinding needs of heart and body, the illusion that one can change reality to suit one's desires - just by wanting to enough. McKeon's intelligence and insight shine through every page, and the words themselves perform miracles of revelation as they dance from one sentence to the next (Robin Black, author of LIFE DRAWING)

It's a great pleasure to read something so acute and beautifully written - especially the dialogue, the voices spring off the page - and also so subtly subversive. It's a story of self-realisation and artistic freedom told by the person who was realised upon. So many women will recognise themselves in Catherine (Kate Clanchy, author of MEETING THE ENGLISH)

McKeon's first novel, Solace, was a work of quiet beauty that won the Irish Book of the Year Award. Here we go back to Ireland in the late 1990s where Catherine, a student of literature, embarks on an intense friendship with James, an artist in the making. I don't want to give anything away, but one of the joys of this novel is the unpredictable direction it takes and I read it in one sitting in a state of continual surprise (Cathy Rentzenbrink The Bookseller)

The astonishing, lyrical and ambitious second novel by the winner of the Irish Book of the Year Award