Customer Reviews

Tender Loving Rage

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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