Belinda McKeon

In Belinda McKeon's prize-winning first novel, Mark Casey is a doctoral student writing a thesis on the 19th-century novelist Maria Edgeworth. As with many students who toil over a long-term academic project, Mark has grown weary of his subject and doubtful of both his argument and his career prospects. His search for distraction takes him to pubs and parties, at one of which he meets Joanne Lynch, a lawyer in training. Mark and Joanne fall in love, and their relationship is solidified when show more Joanne quickly becomes pregnant. Before all of this Mark's life was already complicated, financially tenuous and bristling with emotional landmines. His parents live on the family farm in the Irish midlands. Mark, an only son, does not particularly enjoy farm work but, as infrequently as he can manage without seeming spiteful or neglectful, makes the trek from Dublin to visit with his mother and to help his father, Tom, with chores that the older man can't manage on his own. Joanne is from the same town as Mark, and years earlier Tom and Joanne's father had business dealings, which turned out badly for Tom Casey. Even though Joanne's father is long dead, Tom's resentment persists. When the baby, Aoife, is born, a sort of reconciliation takes place. Tom grudgingly accepts Joanne and Aoife into his life. Then tragedy strikes. Mark and Tom, left alone with each other and Aoife, are forced by circumstance to set aside their pride and differences and learn how to be truthful with themselves and with each other. The drama at the heart of Solace builds slowly. It smoulders rather than explodes. Belinda McKeon is not afraid to spend entire chapters setting the scene. Inevitably, some readers will grow impatient. However, this is a novel that probes human motivation fearlessly and minutely. The emotions it evokes are raw and vivid. The prose, often spellbinding, is rich with moments of astonishing beauty. Undoubtedly the chorus of Irish literature includes many accomplished voices, but with her first novel Belinda McKeon makes a convincing case for herself as an important new voice, one well worth listening to. show less

There are few things more exhilarating or frightening than college. Old enough to know there is more out there but young enough to have no idea what it is. Into this world comes eighteen-year-old Catherine who has, amazingly, managed to convince her conservative parents that she should live at school in Dublin rather than commute from home. Quiet and shy she is soon swept off her feet by the most unlikely of new friends, an older boy named James who is everything she is not. He is not in show more school but is pursuing photography and is geeky, funny, and affectionate. He becomes her conduit to the world—taking her into situations she would never venture into on her own and saying out loud what she only thinks and feels. Thanks to author Belinda McKeon in her new novel Tender we become privy to the vast and varied rhythms of friendship and how, when we’re young, things can change in a flash.

Set in the late 1990s, Ireland is still a deeply religious country so when James reveals to Catherine that he is gay it adds another element to Tender. The unique intimacy they share where

Already they had their own way of talking, their private phrases, their language, and they’d only known each other since that morning in June…p. 4

is freed from the tension that sex puts between members of the opposite sex. They are still able to move in the intense, almost shivery atmosphere of romance, but without any of the fear a romantic relationship engenders, but this is only true in their world. Everywhere else James has to negotiate through the reactions of his family, friends, and the environment outside university, with Catherine, as his dearest friend, assuming a protective role. It isn’t until college begins to wind down that things for both shift and actions are taken that can’t be undone.

Despite how much of Tender feels tender McKeon is not content with easy to define characters. By the time the novel ends, it’s difficult to sum up either James or Catherine and this is why the novel lingers. Through her prose she evokes the emotions stirred up by college—the ending of the teenage years and the beginning of adulthood; the uncomfortable dance of dating, sexuality, trying to decide who and what you’re supposed to be. There is no huge action in Tender, but a small story with implications that while they don’t change the course of the world, permanently alter a relationship. The mistakes the heart makes when the mind knows better. show less

McKeon takes a line from James Salter’s Light Years as her epigraph: “You know, you only have one friend like that; there can’t be two.”

Tender is an absorbing at times irritating examination of an obsessive friendship among the young, of Irish history during the Nineties when homosexuality is finally legalized in Ireland, of urban university life versus the rural upbringing they share, of art and literature as the protagonist studies Hughes and Plath and writes art criticism, and show more finally the jealousy that undoes them. Catherine is eighteen when she meets aspiring photographer James in 1997. He is a year older, just back from working in Berlin. They bond like magic and talk daily. The author opens the book with a James Salter quote: “You know, you only have one friend like that; there can’t be two.”

The book is structured in interesting ways, starting out with much talking in the narrative as the two become close, moving into choppiness in Moonfoam and Silver when deeper relationships and sex intrude and tapering off to lots of poetry in Romance when the connection falters and fails. The final sections occur at a reunion fourteen years later.

My exasperation with Catherine in the beginning of the story was high, her youth, her naivete, her self-absorption but slowly the reader understands her intensity, her desperation not to lose James. By the time she loses herself in an ill-planned confrontation and forsakes the friendship, it is a much more empathetic eye gazing at young Catherine and absorbing her shock and horror at what happens around her. Fortunately, the author gives us a look at the two of them fourteen years hence to see how all turned out. There's humor, too, and beautiful sentences. And again very much along the periphery of this story of young people at Trinity College in Dublin are the weight and effect of the Troubles in Ireland. show less

McKeon takes a line from James Salter’s Light Years as her epigraph: “You know, you only have one friend like that; there can’t be two.”

Tender is an absorbing at times irritating examination of an obsessive friendship among the young, of Irish history during the Nineties when homosexuality is finally legalized in Ireland, of urban university life versus the rural upbringing they share, of art and literature as the protagonist studies Hughes and Plath and writes art criticism, and show more finally the jealousy that undoes them. Catherine is eighteen when she meets aspiring photographer James in 1997. He is a year older, just back from working in Berlin. They bond like magic and talk daily. The author opens the book with a James Salter quote: “You know, you only have one friend like that; there can’t be two.”

The book is structured in interesting ways, starting out with much talking in the narrative as the two become close, moving into choppiness in Moonfoam and Silver when deeper relationships and sex intrude and tapering off to lots of poetry in Romance when the connection falters and fails. The final sections occur at a reunion fourteen years later.

My exasperation with Catherine in the beginning of the story was high, her youth, her naivete, her self-absorption but slowly the reader understands her intensity, her desperation not to lose James. By the time she loses herself in an ill-planned confrontation and forsakes the friendship, it is a much more empathetic eye gazing at young Catherine and absorbing her shock and horror at what happens around her. Fortunately, the author gives us a look at the two of them fourteen years hence to see how all turned out. There's humor, too, and beautiful sentences. And again very much along the periphery of this story of young people at Trinity College in Dublin are the weight and effect of the Troubles in Ireland. show less