Summary
Summary
An extraordinary memoir of a family haunted by tragedy: "I've read very few contemporary novels that can rival Finneran's nonfiction." --Jonathan Franzen
A superb portrait of family life, this "absorbing and thoughtful" memoir is a love story unlike any other ( Library Journal ). The Finnerans--Irish Catholic parents with five children in St. Louis--are a seemingly unexceptional family whose lives are upended by a catastrophic event: the suicide of the author's fifteen-year-old younger brother after being publicly humiliated in junior high school.
A gentle, handsome boy, Sean Finneran 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 the Finnerans are, and how the long accumulation of love and memory helps them survive their terrible loss.
"Unforgettable in its restraint and quiet beauty," The Tender Land is a testament to the always-complicated ways in which we love one another ( Publishers Weekly ). 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. In doing so, she "reminds us of how complicated, unique, and fragile an organism the family is" ( The Boston Globe ).
"[Great writers] change us. Kathleen Finneran fits in this niche. . . . Her prose sings." -- USA Today
"Beautifully written . . . Like life itself, this memoir evokes both sadness and joy." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Just after Christmas in 1982, when he was 15, Finneran's younger brother, Sean, killed himself by taking an overdose of their father's heart medicine. Finneran's story, though, is essentially a love story of a family whose offhand tenderness and care for one another cannot be obliterated, not by depression, not even by death. There were five Finneran children growing up in St. Louis, Sean and Kelly much younger than the other three. A strain of what their mother calls "sadness" ran through the family, easily recognizable in these Prozac-saturated times but heartbreaking nonetheless. Finneran spirals stories of her sweet, affable brother--his devotion to their little niece; his affinity for all small creatures--with the deadly darkness that descended on him after a humiliating moment on the school basketball court. Her parents and her siblings come vividly into view in the kind of stories people tell about one another around the kitchen table. Love, faith, prayer, the terrible congruence of sex and death--literal in Finneran's case--make a kind of memento mori like no other. If Sean is an angel, as his mother believes, he is surely alight with the joy of his sister's devotion and her own victory over the demons he knew. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido
Library Journal Review
Finneran, the middle child in an Irish Catholic family residing in St. Louis, presents a loving portrait of her family. Nine years separate Finneran from her next youngest sibling, Sean. Finneran transports the reader to various points in her family history, moving effortlessly between years and related events in clear and detailed writing. The Finnerans exist as a loving yet unremarkable family until Sean's suicide at age 15. Finneran's portraits of Sean, her other siblings, her parents, and herself in the wake of Sean's death are notable for their honesty and emotion. She details her own struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts while trying desperately to shoulder the burden of her brother's sudden death. The result is an absorbing and thoughtful memoir and an outstanding first book. Highly recommended.--Dianna White, OCLC/WLN Pacific Northwest Svc. Ctr., Lacey, WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.