Customer Reviews

Tenderness

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

In this psychological thriller, Cormier takes us on a journey with two young adults seeking "Tenderness" in their own ways. For Lori Cranston, it is the search for unconditional love, security, & respect--concepts she only dreams of as her dysfunctional mother drags her from town to town and from abusive boyfriend to abusive boyfriend. For Eric Poole, the eighteen year old who serial killer who has murdered his mother and step-father under the guise that he has been abused, as well as killing 3 teenage girls for pleasure, " tenderness" becomes the obsession of control that he has over a human life just before he kills. When these two characters come together, Cormier weaves a tale of suspense with an ironic ending neither expected or even hoped for. Although neither character is very likable in the beginning, by the end of the novel, both Lori and Eric are somewhat sympathetic as Cormier subtlely reveals more and more exposition of the character's backgrounds. What is so disturbing about this book is the knowledge that in the real world, there are probably real people who are just as chilling as these two characters. In Tenderness, it's the realism that is so repugnant.

Lori Cranston is fifteen years old and has run away from home again. Lori is looking for Tenderness in her life. She finds this tenderness in an eighteen year old boy named Eric Poole. Eric has just been released from Juvenile detention after three years of time due to the murder of his mother and father. Eric is also looking for tenderness, only he finds this tenderness in loving and killing beautiful girls. Lori meets Eric and becomes fixated on him while getting more involved in his life. I highly recomend this book to readers of an appropriate age. Robert Cormier is an author who writes novels for young adults but I think that this one in particular could pass for adult material. Lori is as emotional as most teenagers would be at her age. Unfortunately she has encountered some really horrible experiences that no teenager should have to. Lori feels that she needs someone to hold on to, someone to be her tenderness and give her tenderness. This is where Eric Poole comes into play. She meets him and recognizes him strangely from her past. There is an ironic trust between the two of them and they seem to form a bond. This novel should definitely serve as a warning to young teenagers who are into hitch-hiking and who are undoubtly naive. Many young girls are looking for a little tenderness in their lives and would welcome the invitation. Lori welcomes Eric's invitation without knowing the truth about his dark secrets and this hidden truth serves as a thrilling end to the tenderness relationship...or does it? Will Eric and Lori meet tenderness together or will this thriller end in a twist of fate that will not easily be forgotten?

Cormier takes this beautiful word and turns it into something terrifying. Flashing between the viewpoints of two troubled teens, this harrowing novel reads like an assiduous character study, pulling no punches yet somehow engaging the reader's sympathy for these two memorable characters.

Troubled teens are nothing new in young adult literature, but here the protagontists are presented in such chilling detail that they don't really seem to belong to a novel marketed for children at all. Eric is a serial killer and the reader spends about half the novel seeing the world through his psycotic eyes, sometimes even rooting for him as he counts the days before his release from a juvenile detention center.

The other character, Lori, is almost as disturbing. A teen-age runaway, she is at the mercy of inexplicable fixations. She pursues them ruthlessly, with little regard to the consequences or her increasingly disjointed role in society.

In typical Cormier fashion, each of these character's actions are subject to merciless implications. Their inevitable meeting leads to an abrupt surprise ending that is throughly plausible and lingers in the memory like a nightmare. Readers will never feel the same about the word "tenderness" again.

The psychological thriller "Tenderness", written by Robert Cormier and published in 1995, deals - as you can read in the title - with tenderness.

Eric Poole is an 18-year-old mass murderer who killed his mother, his stepfather Harvey and three other girls. He was used to tenderness from his mother. She loved him very much and they had a good relationship until she fell in love with her husband-to-be, Harvey. Since then, her whole tenderness belonged to Harvey, for which Eric dislikes his mother and also sneers at Harvey. Eric is sure to find tenderness in caressing and killing girls that look like his mother. Maybe he would have committed suicide in the facility where he was imprisoned, if he didn't believe in love or tenderness.

Lorelei Cranston has never experienced tenderness in her life.

Her mother is an alcoholic with see-sawing boyfriends and has other things in her mind than loving her child like a normal mother does. Lori looks for foreign men who look gentle who can maybe give her tenderness. It's a big advance, that she searches for men who look gentle and not for men who are pretty. It's not the outward appearance that defines if somebody can be tender with you or not. Perhaps, Lori doesn't even know what tenderness means exactly.

In the end, Lori's and Eric's ways cross. Will they find tenderness or have in the end even less than before?

The whole exciting book deals with this topic and by the way, you can read Eric's and Lori's mind. This is very interesting, because you normally can't look into a murderer's and a runaway's (Lori has run away from home) mind.

Sometimes it's a bit confusing, because in the end Eric's and Lori's points of view change very fast and you sometimes don't know who's telling the story now.

All in all, you can say, that the book is very recommendable to everyone who is interested in psychological aspects of other persons and to everyone who loves exciting books!

Tenderness by Robert Cormier is a story about a girl named Lori who gets these "fixations" on people and the only way they can be broken is if she kisses them. Her first fixation is a rockstar that goes my the name Throb. She goes to her old town to see Throb so she can finally end her fixation.
After she ends that fixation she find herself into another one with Eric Poole an 18 year old boy who has just be let out of a correctional home for the murder of his parents. So now Lori is fixated on a Murderer.
In the book Lori and Eric meet. Lori relizes shes not fixated on Eric shes in love with him, but Eric is searching for Tenderness. Lori recieves tenderness when she ends her fixations and knows that Eric holds the kind of tenderness she wants.

I think this book is a great book it shows the different points of view from the main charecters and uses imagery. You would like this book if you were into twisted love stories. I one things about the book that I didnt like was how it ended other wise it was great.

The title of my book is Tenderness. Robert Cormier is the author. He has also written: Heros, The Chocolate War, We All Fall Down, and more.
Lori Cranston is a teenager with blonde hair and a nice mature body (though she is only 15.) She only has a mother because her father had died along time ago. Her mother was always beautiful, and goes through lots of men, not her choice though...she just isn't good a picking out the "good type of guys." Most boyfriends of her mother like Lori also. Lori's mother is a waitress, and she is very experienced. They move around alot because of this, her mom likes to move up to higher qualitiy resturants.
Loriel had "fixations." She ins't a stalker or physco or a rapest, but she gets moments when she wanted to be tender with someone. Like the guy ad Aud-Vid land, she lets him look at her so that she gets free CD's from him since he works there. Or how about the guy she met on the thru-way, she let him make-out with her and touch her so she could get twenty dollars. But then her mothers boyfriend Gary, the first guy that actually treats her mother right since her husband trys to lay the moves on Loriel. She decideds she needs to get out, so she doesn't hurt her mom. She leaves a note saying that she is staying with her friends in her old town, her mom thinks she does this alot...even though Lori makes up peoples names everytime she leaves.
Now Lori is fixated on her favorite singer, Throb. All she wants is to kiss him, so she goes to Wickburg (her old town) and finds out that she can meet Throb. (But of course Throb does not know.) She waits outside in an alley-way where Throb will go to avoid the crowds of teenage girls. As the door opens she runs out and kisses Throb hard on the lips. At that moment, her fixation is oer. Those kind of things she gets, melt like ice. Her moral is, to do it and get it over with. (A moral is something like a motive, a reason for something that you do.)
She now is in a diner in Wickburg and something catches her eye. On the news it is talking about a guy that is getting out of jail for murder. (He killed his mother and his step-dad.) She then has a flash-back. (This is when something that once happend before pops into your head and you remember it.) She remembers his familar face, those eyes. Then she figures it out. She saw him along time ago when she used to live in Wickburg at the train tracks. She saw him with a girl and they went into the woods, but then she saw him again awhile later and he wasn't with her anymore, but she didn't think anything of it. She had a slight coversation with him.
After Eric gets out of jail (or the facility he was in) he moves in with his aunt. Lori goes through alot to stay in Wickburg...because she now has to be tender with Eric, and Eric gets these moments also. He just wants to be tender with someone, like Lori. One night Lori sneaks into his van to sleep and when she wakes up he is in the van pulling out of the drive-way. She is now trapped, so she shows him she is in there...he is stuck with her now. But of course, he remembered her too.
They are on a long journey in head of them. Lori is fixated...there is nothing stopping her, but what she doesn't know is Eric killed at least 3 girls because of wanting to be tender. The police are still watching Eric, there after him.
I recomend this book, it was the best book I ever read...I couldn't put it down! If you want to read a thriller, one that keeps you on the edge of your seat, Tenderness is it!

Tenederness, by Robert Cormier, was about a young girl who fell in love with a serial killer in Wickburg, New York.
Lori Cranston was an only child and lived with her mother and her mother's boyfriend. While watching t.v. she saw Eric Poole and immediatly fell in love.
Eric Poole was just getting out of a facility. He had murdered his mother and her boyfirend and was sent away until he turned eighteen. Now he was out and had the taste of blood in his mouth.
When they meet, Lori has to try really hard to get Eric to like her and want to keep her alive. She has no fear and he likes that.
When I first began to read this book it didn't capture me the way I like books to. As I read further on, little by little, I couldn't stop. It wasn't that the story was just so good, but more the way each chapter was written. The author went back and forth from character to character, giving you hints that the two would meet(foreshadowing,) but not knowing what they would do together. The answer won't come until the last chapter, too. You just have to keep reading. Each chapter will strike you differently. Some will leave you grief strucken and feeling remorse for the characters, while others leave you angry and wanting revenge.
Tenderness is a great book for teenagers, and young adults. I really enjoyed reading it.

Upon reading tenderness, I was intrigued by how real the book was. Lori's behavior showed just how a sexually abused teenager might act, instead of the hysterical actions of many abused fiction characters. I loved reading this and many Robert Cormier books because they seem to unlock the human mind. While reading about Eric Poole, I couldn't help but think if this is what really goes on inside the mind of a serial killer. It is the only way to describe him, and the way that Lori and Eric's stories were brought together in the end truly got to me. After reading this, Robert Cormier has been my favorite author of all time, and I, at the age of fifteen, am still setting out to read every single one.

Tenderness is a strange novel intended for younger people. The plot, although unusual, kept my interest throughout the whole story. Always wondering what would happen next, I continually read on until I finished. It began with Lori, the main character, talking about her latest fixation. Whenever she got obsessed with someone, she had to kiss that person to end the fascination. This was only one of her minor quirks; Lori also felt the need for tenderness in her life. She sought it with her English teacher, her mother's boyfriend, and even people that she did not know. The person she wanted tenderness with in the early part of the book was Throb. He was a musician that she saw on television and became enchanted with him. She ran away from home when she heard he was going to be playing in a near by town. Once she got her chance to kiss him, Lori became fixated on someone new. While sitting in a restaurant, she saw a news report. Eric Poole, a convicted killer, was being released from jail. Eric had killed his mother, step father, and was accused of killing many young girls. Like Lori, he wanted someone to be tender with. Eric would choose a girl, go out with her, and then killer her. He was always expected to have committed these crimes, but it could not be proven in court. Lori would sit outside Eric's house for many weeks, until one rainy night she hid in his van. He noticed her there the next morning when he was driving on the freeway, attempting to leave town. During their travels, they developed a relationship that would best be described as peculiar. They ended up learning more about themselves, each other, and tenderness as their connection grew stronger. This book was hard to put down once I started it. It held my interest and kept me hooked from beginning to end. Thought it was not intellectually stimulating, it was interesting and worth reading. Lori and Eric made the story unreal, like people one would never expect to meet, but were intriguing. I never knew what to expect, they continually surprised me. Tenderness greatly resembled many of Cormier's other books in that the plot and characters appealed to a younger audience. Some of his novels have even won awards. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes stories that are not considered "normal". The dynamics create a clear image that help carry the story from beginning to end.

I thought this book was great. You got both Eric and Lori's viewpoint. I thought it was well written and I read it in an hour and a half. I couldn't put it down. The ending was quite a surprise but I still loved it. I'm looking forward to reading more books by Robert Cormier.