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Tenderness
Tenderness
Tenderness
Audiobook5 hours

Tenderness

Written by Robert Cormier

Narrated by Jennifer Ikeda

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

Best-selling author Robert Cormier's suspenseful and masterfully told novel takes bold steps into some of the most difficult topical territory ever conceived for young adult fiction. Booklist praises this "mesmerizing plunge into the mind of a psychopathic teen killer that is both deeply disturbing and utterly compelling."
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 12, 2008
ISBN9781436186162
Tenderness

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Reviews for Tenderness

Rating: 3.779816633027523 out of 5 stars
4/5

109 ratings10 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This opens up an interesting world of thought. First I was sad that there are people like Lori who only want someone to love them and will do just about anything to have that affection. Also crazy that there are people like Eric that have no empathy or feelings - a true sociopath is how I see him. And then there is the irony of how justice worked on him. Very strange book, but still intriguing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Disturbing. Tenderness is the story of two emotionally stilted young adults: Lori, a fifteen-year-old runaway with an unhealthy fixation with finding what she calls "tenderness" and Eric, an eighteen-year-old who has just been released from a "facility" he was in for three years for murdering his mother and stepfather. Lori, whose body matured far faster than her emotions, has left home temporarily because her mother's most recent live-in boyfriend has gotten a little too close for comfort. Not Lori's comfort--she doesn't really mind, as she finds his touch "tender", but she is worried that it will upset her mother if she finds out. She leaves home to find her current obsession, Throb, a music idol who will be playing a concert in a nearby town. When a surprise kiss from Throb turns out to be a disappointment, she finds a new object to fixate on: recently released Eric, who just so happens to be staying at his aunt's house in the same town. Lori recognizes Eric as a boy who had been nice to her once three years earlier, and decides she must see him again.

    From Eric's point of view, we find that the murders he was convicted for were neither his first nor his most meaningful victims. Eric is a serial killer, having started with small animals and graduating rather soon to human victims. He found "tenderness" with three girls before moving on to his mother and her husband. Even while still in the "facility" he begins to fixate on a girl he sees there, who he calls "the senorita". He plans to meet with her once he is released, and she indicates that she is more than willing to meet with him too.

    Eric and Lori's paths soon intersect, and readers view their disturbing relationship through both participants' eyes. Lori admits her obsession, slowly comes to realize what Eric really is, and soon tells him that she loves him and would never betray him to anyone. Eric, for his part, does appear to feel something for Lori, though it is not at all a healthy, real concern for her as a person for in his mind he never refers to her as anything but "the girl". They spend time together, and readers are kept in constant suspense about what Eric will do next--just how safe can Lori possibly be with him? The ending is surprising, and leaves one contemplating the nature of true justice.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I don't know what it is about Robert Cormier, but I keep picking up his books even though I don't like his writing style. They're just growing on me. This one has a little too much cliche going on (the runaway who stalks the serial killer--maybe not a big cliche but it's not a surprise at all) and the ending, which is pretty much like all his other books with its messages of Life Isn't Fair and Cormier's Protagonists Never Win.

    Not a bad read, a bit of creepy but not a whole lot, in part because there's not much mystery here: we know who these characters are and what their stories are, unlike I Am the Cheese.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This young adult novel features a young serial killer, Eric Poole, who has recently been released from juvenile detention after 3 years for the murder of his parents. He is also a suspect in several other murders of young women but he was never proven guilty. One officer knows Eric is guilty of much more than killing his parents is determined to make sure he doesn't hurt another girl.Lori is a young runaway with a disturbing habit of using her sexuality to get things from men. She met Eric in passing when she was twelve, wandering the railroad tracks. She does not know it but she nearly missed witnessing a murder Eric committed. She often gets fixated on a specific man and must find him and kiss him on the mouth to end her obsession. Immediately after satisfying her latest fixation on a musician she sees the young killer on tv and is immediately hooked again, on Eric.Lori tracks Eric down at his aunt's home and the outcome is inevitable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    All Eric Poole wants is to show some "tenderness" to girls. Just because that involves killing them shouldn't matter.His release from "juvie detention" after a three year stretch leads him to a strange encounter with a girl on a mission. She has obsessions with guys that makes her have to kiss them. Lori had seen Eric Poole years before when she was 12 years old and never released that she had power over him, because she saw him with a girl (that he had killed and hid) that was Eric's secret kill.Their journey together is one of two people searching for love and understanding, but ends with tragedy and reprecussions that finally curb the monster within Eric.Very much a psychological terror story. Popular author.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A dark, suspenseful story. I would have given it a higher rating, but I feel as though it should have been longer. I wanted to get to know the characters a bit more. It was definitely interesting to get into the head of a serial killer. I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, but the last scene in the jail as he thought of how she held him... that was touching.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is probably the most explicit of Cormier's novels, in terms of both the sex and the violence. (But I've had the privilege of reading its early drafts and they made the final product seem quite tame!) It's structured almost as precisely as I am the Cheese. It takes a writer of great skill to get the reader to understand and sympathize with a teenage necrophiliac serial killer, even as they understand he must be brought down. Lori was blonde and big-breasted and promiscuous, but she was surprisingly innocent and likeable for all that. Jake Proctor could be seen as the stereotype of an old cop, but he's hardly a cardboard figure. Kudos to Cormier as usual.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Upon reading, it's easy to understand why Cormier has such a reputation among the young adult audience. Even though his tales are not always to my taste, I have to admire his skill through the writing that is at the same time dark, comfortable, and complex. Eric, a seventeen year-old sociopath who has a fetish for the deaths of young women, pairs up with Lori, a runaway in this unlikely tale of two hearts finding their similar in another.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I am such a Cormier fan. I can't believe that I am finally finding him in my late twenties. There are not a lot of young adult authors (especially in the 70s and 80s) who would take on such dark topics like bullying, murder, conformity, etc.What sets Cormier apart is that he carries this darkness all the way through, never giving us a neat little package at the end.Eric has been in juvy for three years, for the murder of his parents. He's about to turn 18, and he'll be out and his records will be sealed. If the police knew about the other girls, it would be a different story.Lori is a girl with a woman's body. She gets what what she wants short-term: money, cd's, rides. However, the thing she really wants is for her fixations to go away and to be loved.What happens when these two meet up for a second time?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Eric, a complex serial killer, who is released from jail at the age of 18 for the contrived revenge killings of his abusive step-father and mother, encounters Lori, for the second time in his life, which leads to the unveiling of his psychopathic desires and underdeveloped emotions. The two main characters , both victims of sexual abuse, are easy to sympathize with as they try to quench their needs for affection through murder. High suspense with an unexpected twist. Mature topics are handled delicately. The book could be used in a high school psychology or ethics class.