Rating: 
Summary: wonderful
Review: It has been a good long while since I've read a book as well written as The Tender Land. Finneran writes in a style that seems to be unaffected by other books covering this sort of topic---a family tragedy. She writes without sensationalism or blaring confrontations about a family that is basically kind, decent and loving, but haunted by what they call "the sadness"---depression that affects them generation after generation. By going back and forth in time, we learn by the end so much about this caring and unique family, and how they managed to go on after losing one of their own.
Rating:
Summary: Lovingly Revealing
Review: Kathleen Finneran's debut novel, "The Tender Land" is unforgettable in its restraint and quiet beauty. Finneran's words lovingly reveal her family's tragic history and her own painful coming of age. She deals with her 15-year-old brother Sean's suicide by sharing this memoir with others as a love letter to him."I realized I needed to write about my brother's death in a way that was more intentional than tangential. I started out in the form I was comfortable with, writing an autographical essay that was submerged in more objective prose, in this case an essay that explored my mother's real belief that my brother was an angel by comparing his qualities to those angels that exist in literature - Thomas Aquinas on angels, Dante Milton," explained Finneran. "The end result was something that seemed very artificial, and I felt my brother deserved better from me. So I just started writing what I wanted to remember about him, free from any form or genre constraints; in doing that, in taking the simplest and mot direct approach, I learned to write about his death, I had to write about his life, and to write about his life, I had to write about my whole family." Finneran was born in 1957 into an Irish Catholic family. She and her four siblings, an older brother and sister, Michael and Mary, and a younger brother and sister, Sean and Kelly, had a comfortable life in suburban St. Louis. Depression and suicide ran in the family. Kathleen suffered from depression and her sister, Kelly, tried to overdose at age 28. Finneran's first sexual experience coincided with the night Sean died, making sex and death forever inextricable for her. She slept with a man. "How could I tell Mary what that weekend was for me, making love to a woman the next." She later found comfort with a woman lover, Ellis, who was her best friend, despite her mother's cautious warning about being "different." "'There's something about Ellis,' Sean had said once. 'When you are with her, you always feel safe.' And it was true. She lived simply, straightforwardly, as if life required nothing more than mastering a series of survival skills. And she had mastered them. I marveled at the shallowness of her breath as she slept, her blond hair falling across her face, her body's no bigger than Sean's. Her arms were stretched out above me as if she were trying to shield me from something, as if I were a child whose body was precious and small and in need of her protection." Throughout "The Tender Land," I wondered why Sean had committed suicide. Finneran eventually divulged the reason. "...On the day he died, Florrisant Junior High was winning by a large margin. With little time left on the clock, the coach felt it safe to send in the second string. In those final few minutes, Sean made his first shot of the season..." "That night at home he didn't mention it. At dinner, he never said a word about the game. After he finished doing the dishes, he went upstairs, made a timid attempt at slitting his wrists, then opted to swallow a fistful of the pills that keep my father's heart beating at a regular rhythm. 'I hate basketball and am no good at it,' he wrote in a letter he left. In the few minutes that he had been sent into play, he had taken the ball down the court the wrong way. The shot he made was to the other team's basket."
I understood Sean's frustration. I was in my freshman year as Sean, and the gymnasium was filled with people yelling, "Shoot it!" I made a basket for the other team. I broke out laughing. My team won the game. "They (Finneran's parents) don't understand why I would want the world to know some of the things I've written about myself (in "The Tender Land). Well, it's not that I want the world to know things about me that most people would consider private. It's not that at all. In many ways, I would have preferred not to have revealed myself to the extent I felt necessary. But the book revolves around my bother Sean's suicide, and however many reasons or causes can be attributed to someone's suicide, I think, in the end, people kill themselves because they despise themselves deeply, even if for only a moment. They can't continue on in the world being who they are; they can't fathom ever being different from how they are in that moment, and they can't conceive of there being anyone else in the world who is like them," said Finneran. I sympathized with Finneran throughout the book because my cousin, who is a year older than I, committed suicide two months before I moved to Seattle. I understood how Finneran felt; however, it wasn't my kid brother, who is alive and well and living in Indiana. Finneran's "The Tender Land" has been written, as a personal essay extended at length yet has remained a quality piece of work.
Rating:
Summary: Welcome to a New Magical Voice: Good Literature Lives
Review: Kathleen Finneran's magical book The Tender Land: A Family Love Story is absolutely breathtaking. A warning to the faint of spirit: Do not venture into Finneran's Tender Land, unless you are prepared to open yourself to raw emotions. Prepare to be stripped down to the bare essence of your being and know that you will experience life in all its unadorned forms. Your emotions will run the scales from deepest grief to glorious release. By the time you finish this slim volume, you will know and love the Finnerans -- each and every one. Most of all you will know that the missing Finneran, Sean -- a suicide at age 15, still serves as his family's angel 18 years after his death. Take a magical journey to The Tender Land. When you have reached your destination, you will know that you have experienced the rare privilege of being enthralled by a gifted storyteller, who generously has shared her life and memories of that portion of her life which helped forge her transcendent talent. Read this book. It will clarify your spirit and validate the wonder of human connection regardless of individual backgrounds.
Rating:
Summary: This is a great book
Review: Let's be honest. Buying -- and more importantly, reading -- a book by an unknown/firstime author is scary. Is it worth the investment? In our culture, we are taught that the cream is supposed to rise to the top. Yet, we all know about the hidden jewels that, for one reason or another, don't attract the attention that they should. This is that hidden gem. I read this book because I took a writing class with the author. Several students read the book during the term and raved about it, but I remained reluctant. (Not sure why, but I was.) A few months after the class, though, I decided to pick up the book and read it. And I was not disappointed. "The Tender Land" is a true story about the author's attempt to deal with the suicide of her brother. Although nobody in my family or circle of friends has committed suicide, I was still able to sympathize with the author and thoroughly enjoyed reading her story. Not only is there a good story here, but the writing is interesting, too. Finneran's writing style reminds me of Ellen Degeners: she keeps going off on tangents, but does it in a way that is entertaining AND compelling.
Rating:
Summary: Excellence
Review: The Tender Land is written by a Catholic woman whose younger brother committed suicide when he was 15. She was 24 at the time and she had four siblings, so the book is full of descriptions of all of them, but her brother is the focus. The author deftly weaves interesting stories of her family from different years into one continuous narrative. She also reveals some very personal stories, and although they verge very close to the maudlin, they do not cross the line. Many of the stories are so personal that one really admires the courage she had to publish them. One thing that she reveals in the middle of the book is that she happened to lose her virginity on the night her brother killed himself, so her Catholic sense of guilt about sex is forever intertwined with her guilt about not being at home when her brother was dying. Being an ex-Catholic, I can relate to the guilt about sex, but I can't imagine how horrible it must have been for her to find out later that night that her brother had just killed himself at their family home. Anyway it's a terrific book and one that could convince anyone not to commit suicide.
Rating:
Summary: A sensitive look at a family overcoming tragedy with love
Review: This is an incredibly beautiful book. I found myself actually making noises out loud (sighs, wistful "ahs") while reading it! It is that beautifully written and that beautiful in its sentiment! The author does an amazing job in detailing her struggle to come not only to accept herself, but also to accept her brother's death (by suicide). She slowly peels away layers of her family history and the details of what led her brother to commit such a desperate act. I found this very moving as it allowed me more time to feel I understood him and to question (as everyone does when something like this happens), "Why?" I really cannot recommend this book enough. I hope you simply do yourself a favor and buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Tribute to Finneran
Review: This is the most gorgeous book I've read in a decade, seriously. I am a writer and I have taught college-level creative writing and literature for the past thirteen years. While researching a reading list for my class in reading and writing the memoir, it was my good fortune, and that of my students, to happen upon Finneran's book. I used the book that semester, and am using it again this fall for the same class. Aside from being a literary gem, the book provides rich opportunities to teach about writing well. It's lovely, poetic, searingly candid, exquisitely scenic. Every single character is painted in full detail, adding up to the portrait of a family who has lost something big. I highly recommend this book. If this world had half a brain, it would be on the bestseller list.
Rating:
Summary: Tribute to Finneran
Review: This is the most gorgeous book I've read in a decade, seriously. I am a writer and I have taught college-level creative writing and literature for the past thirteen years. While researching a reading list for my class in reading and writing the memoir, it was my good fortune, and that of my students, to happen upon Finneran's book. I used the book that semester, and am using it again this fall for the same class. Aside from being a literary gem, the book provides rich opportunities to teach about writing well. It's lovely, poetic, searingly candid, exquisitely scenic. Every single character is painted in full detail, adding up to the portrait of a family who has lost something big. I highly recommend this book. If this world had half a brain, it would be on the bestseller list.
Rating:
Summary: Exquisite!
Review: This may be the best book of any kind that I have ever read. Finneran's profound exploration of family love is so true, so wise, so powerful. In line after line I recognized truths about my own family that I did not realize I knew. Her own family comes alive in this beautifully written memoir, but it is our family that we end up thinking about in new ways. What a gift.
Rating:
Summary: Truly unforgettable
Review: This memoir is one that I will never forget - it affected me in the way that The Lovely Bones did - it's left me with a profound feeling of heartbreak and poignancy. Kathleen Finneran is probably one of the bravest of authors as she lays bare many personal feelings and experiences of her own, along with the family tragedy that the Finnerans lived through when they lost 15-year-old Sean to suicide. She portrays her family, separately and wholly, as tight-knit, strong, extremely loving, but tragically touched by depression and suicide. I highly recommend this beautifully written, heartrending, precious memoir. It is one-of-a-kind.
| 
