Tender Loving Rage [Hardcover]

Alfred Bester (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With a title more appropriate to a paperback romance and an author whose reputation was made in an entirely different genre, this posthumous thriller by one of the stellar lights of the golden age of science fiction seems unlikely to find an audience. Although Bester died in 1987, the book seems, in both style and perspective, to have been written well before that, perhaps not too far beyond its late 1950s setting. Beautiful model Julene Krebs attracts the attentions of both a high-powered advertising executive and a prominent research scientist. The two men become friendly as a result of their mutual interest in the girl, and she in turn becomes involved with each. Meanwhile, Bester offers what is presumably intended as satirical commentary on the advertising industry in general and TV commercials in particular, via a stream of embarrassingly awkward conversations and repartee in a variety of settings. There's a threatening, shadowy figure lurking about, as well as intimations of a dark secret in Julene's past, but these matters are so submerged in the plodding story that they seem unimportant--at least until a wild, violent night on Fire Island, N.Y. That's followed by a hurricane, a kidnapping and a thoroughly unbelievable bit of melodrama. In the end, after Bester skirts around an appalling view of rape and its victims, love triumphs over all--sort of.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Tafford Pub (September 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962371246
• ISBN-13: 978-0962371240
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,287,024 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alfred Bester's Last Book!, October 16, 1997

By 

Luciferal "plebiscite" (salt lake city) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tender Loving Rage (Hardcover)

Having just finished reading Alfred Bester's "Tender Loving Rage" I am left with a sense of "unfinished harmony," which seems a greater achievement, in retrospect, than a narrative whose form reaches some kind of completion.

Somehow, a book that manages to tie up its loose ends or come full circle seems contrived when compared to this book. I rather like the idea of a narrative whose body contains multiple episodes that sketch out the characters' realities, developing them with a keen sense of characterization, but whose "narrative bulk" may end up unresolved in some way or at least requires the reader to come to his/her own decision, rather like life. This is what makes Alfred Bester's "Tender Loving Rage" such a compelling read. There is nothing trite about it: it simply sets the scene between the sexes circa '50s New York, and lets the reader come to his or her own conclusions about the nature of Love.

Readers who are hoping for/expecting another of his famous pyroteknic science-fiction masterpieces may very well be disappointed; however, any reader open to a refreshing, incisive perspective on New York in the '50s will relish this novel, whether they're familiar with the author or not.

In any case, it deserves an excellent rating, and am glad I aged it 5 years, for it went down like the finest wine.

(Alfred Bester is a writer I am going to miss for the rest of my life.)

~Shaun Lawton