The Tender Land: A Family Love Story [Paperback]

Kathleen Finneran (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 11, 2003

A superb portrait of family life, THE TENDER LAND is a love story unlike any other. The Finnerans -- parents and five children, Irish Catholics in St. Louis -- are a seemingly unexceptional family. Theirs is a story seldom told, yet it makes manifest how rich and truly extraordinary the ordinary daily experience we take for granted is. In quietly luminous language, Kathleen Finneran renders the emotional, spiritual, and physical terrain of family life -- its closeness and disconnection, its intimacy and estrangement--and pays tribute to the love between parents and children, brothers and sisters.
Ultimately, it is this love that sustains the Finnerans, for at the heart of THE TENDER LAND lies a catastrophic event: the suicide at fifteen of the author's younger brother after a public humiliation in junior high school. A gentle, handsome boy, Sean was a straight-A student and gifted athlete, especially treasured by every member of his family. Masterfully, the book interweaves past and present, showing how inseparable they are, and how the long accumulation of love and memory helps the Finnerans survive their terrible loss.
THE TENDER LAND is a testament to the always complicated ways in which we love one another. In the end, the Finnerans are a family much like the reader's own: like every other family, like no other family.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This sensitive, restrained memoir searches for answers to the most painful of questions: Why would a bright, athletic, seemingly well-adjusted boy like Kathleen Finneran's 15-year-old brother want to take his own life? Sean Finneran's 1971 suicide is the pivotal crisis in The Tender Land, but not the only one. References to a family strain of depressive mental illness sound a warning note; Finneran's maternal grandfather probably killed himself, and her mother is subject to severe bouts of depression that may also have afflicted Sean, whose suicide note reveals a self-hatred that the love of his parents and siblings could not assuage. The author frankly relates her own problems with weight, an inexplicable but irresistible urge to shoplift, and uncertain sexual orientation. But Finneran's precise prose, rich in evocative physical details, convincingly limns an ordinary, generally happy Midwestern family: five children spread over 16 years; a devout, nature- and animal-loving mother; a father who communicated best without words, rooted in "his faith in materials men make of the earth." There are no villains and no answers in this heartbreaking book, which respects the essential mystery of a shattering tragedy and closes with an affirmative message to Sean: "I want to call out your name and tell you, across the tender land, that we have gone on living." --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Unforgettable in its restraint and quiet beauty, Finneran's debut memoir lovingly reveals her family's tragic history and her own painful coming of age. Born in the late 1950s into an Irish Catholic family, she and her four siblings had a comfortable life in suburban St. Louis, thanks to her mother's thrifty management and her father's success as a salesman. But depression and suicide ran in the family and the question of what caused her youngest brother Sean's suicide when he was 15 permeates the book as much as it has haunted the Finnerans--Kathleen was also disposed to depression and another sister tried to overdose at age 28. As a self-conscious, overweight child, the author at times felt ignored by her parents. Nonetheless, at a young age she understood the need to protect her mother from sorrow, so she "made up stories." Sadly for the author, her first sexual experience coincided with the night Sean died, making sex and death forever inextricable for her. She found comfort with a woman lover who was her best friend, despite her mother's cautious warning about being "different." Readers will relish Finneran's skill in capturing her characters. "My mother," she writes, "ends each day this way, dusting in the dark, and in the morning, as soon as she wakes, she dusts again, in daylight." To Sean's suicide note, which disclosed teenage loneliness and disappointments, Finneran offers an exquisite counterpoint in the form of this love letter. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (June 11, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618340742
• ISBN-13: 978-0618340743
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #830,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sensitive look at a family overcoming tragedy with love, May 25, 2000

By 

Timothy A. Young "Tim Young" (Atlanta, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Tender Land: A Family Love Story (Hardcover)

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WONDERFUL, September 29, 2000

By 

JAN BURKHARDT - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tender Land: A Family Love Story (Hardcover)

Many reviews quote"heart-rendering" . This is the book the quote was coined for. You will ache for this family and their tragedy. You will want to know how they move forward and on with their lives and you will care. The writing is superb and probably one of the best in this genre I have ever read.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite!, July 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Tender Land: A Family Love Story (Hardcover)

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.